GroenLinks leader Femke Halsema is under fire from many in her party who claim she made a serious ‘strategic blunder’ by deciding too early not to become involved in coalition talks after the November general election, reports the Volkskrant on its front page today.

But Halsema hits back by saying that it was Labour leader Wouter Bos who purposely kept GroenLinks out of coalition talks. ‘Bos knew we were prepared to step up if the ChristenUnie was rejected. But he wanted to be the only left-wing party in the cabinet…. He chose the ChristenUnie above GroenLinks,’ she told the paper.
After a brief discussion period with the Socialist Party, Labour and the Christian Democrats have gone ahead with coalition negotiations with the orthodox ChristenUnie party.
The Volkskrant reports that 55 GroenLinks party members got together in Utrecht recently to put their criticism of Halsema’s leadership on paper. The move was initiated by Paulus de Wilt who heads Groenlinks in Amsterdam.
He says the group of dissatisfied members has now grown to around a hundred. ‘GroenLinks was set up as an alternative to Labour. But we are no longer that, the Socialist Party is,’ he told the paper.
According to De Wilt GroenLinks is becoming an elite club for white ‘post-modern, cosmopolitan, hedonistic’ people.
Despite the in-fighting within the GroenLinks nobody is expecting heads to roll at the party congress on Saturday, says the Volkskrant.