Third coalition failure will hurt next prime minister, says queen's rep

Wednesday 08 September 2010

A third failure in efforts to form a new government will hurt the the new prime minister, the queen's new negotiator Herman Tjeenk Willink warned on Tuesday.

'There would be no point in letting efforts to form a new government fail for the third time,' Tjeenk Willink said. 'That would damage the credibility of the next prime minister.'

So far, two efforts to form a new government in the Netherlands have flopped.

New attempt

On Tuesday, queen Beatrix charged Tjeenk Willink with assessing the current situation in 'as short a space of time as possible'.

Once he has spoken to all party leaders, the queen will be able to appoint a new negotiator and decide what task to give him, Tjeenk Willink, the deputy president of the Council of State advisory body, said.

And as part of that, Tjeenk Willink said he wanted to be absolutely sure that the next attempt to form a cabinet has a 'reasonable chance of success'.

Right wing

On Tuesday the leaders of the Christian Democrats, VVD Liberals and anti-Islam PVV said they wanted to resume their negotiations, which were halted on Friday when PVV leader Geert Wilders dropped out.

Before that, VVD leader Mark Rutte had let it be known he wanted to write a solo coalition agreement which other parties could then sign up to.

Cuts

Tjeerk Willink was involved as negotiator earlier in the cabinet talks when he recommended the formation of a 'purple plus' cabinet involving the VVD, Labour, GroenLinks and D66. Those talks flopped amid divisions over spending cuts.

According to the NRC, reforming redundancy law and cutting unemployment benefit remain sticking points in the right-wing cabinet plans.

Sources told the paper the PVV is opposed to reforming the labour laws. At the same time, the CDA and VVD are opposed to boosting spending on care of the elderly.

© DutchNews.nl

Comments have been closed for this article.