Attempts to form a new government in the Netherlands, three months after the general election, are turning into a farce, Alexander Pechtold, leader of the Liberal democratic party D66 told a parliamentary debate on Tuesday afternoon.

MPs were debating the Friday collapse of talks on forming a right-wing coalition with the queen’s negotiator Ivo Opstelten. Shortly before the debate started it emerged the three parties – VVD, anti-Islam PVV and Christian Democrats – wanted to resume the talks.
‘Last week was bad for politics as a whole and further annoyed society at large,’ Pechtold said, accusing Opstelten of not being in control of events.
And Femke Halsema, leader of the left-wing green party GroenLinks, said the formation process was taking place in ‘an atmosphere of provocation and polarisation’, she said. ‘If this is the mood of the formation, what sort of government awaits us?’ she said.
Kees van der Staaij, leader of the fundamentalist Christian party SGP which had been tipped as a possible new partner to a right-wing cabinet, said the three parties were guilty of ‘an astonishing and ungracious’ state of affairs. ‘It could and should have been different,’ he said.