Election campaigns kick off with the big three party conferences

The top three parties in the polls – Labour (PvdA), the Christian Democrats (CDA) and Liberals (VVD) – kicked off their election campaigns at the weekend with parties conferences and rousing speeches by their leaders.


And with the economy emerging as the main issue in the campaign, all three party leaders spoke about the need to make cuts.
Government experts say spending must be reduced by €29bn to get the budget deficit back under control.

Labour

Former Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen officially took over from Wouter Bos to lead the Labour campaign on Sunday and warned that making ‘reckless cuts’ will not work.
‘If we make cuts which are too tough and too quick, we will damage the roots of economic recovery, we will return to the dip and it will take longer to climb out again,’ Cohen said. ‘Then the measures we will need to take will be more painful and more people will lose their jobs.’
The crisis had been caused by reliance on the market, Cohen said, warning against ‘blindly following the market’ as a solution for the current problems. The election will not be about who can make the most cuts, but who can get the economy under control, he was quoted as saying in the Telegraaf.
And, he called on the Netherlands to become a land where ‘civilised is not an old-fashioned word’ and where ‘no-one is insulted, not Jews, not gays, and not Muslims.’
Elected mayor
At the Liberal party congress in Arnhem, a narrow majority of delegates backed the inclusion of switching to elected mayors in the party’s manifesto. Dutch mayors are currently crown appointees.
Party leader Mark Rutte described the June 9 vote as ‘the most important election in a generation’.
The national debt must be reduced, Rutte said. ‘The next generations do not have to be worse off than the current one,’ he said. And he reiterated the VVD’s opposition to changing mortgage tax relief.
Prime minister
CDA leader and prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende is hoping to get some benefit out of the fact he is the sitting premier, the Volkskrant states in its reporting.
In his speech, he ignored the other party leaders. And video footage emphasised his role as a long-serving prime minister and ‘statesman of allure’.
‘A government which spends too much is not helping its economy and its future,’ Balkenende said. ‘Look at what happened to Greece.’

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