Samsom: Rutte too soft on Wilders
Itseems there's disagreement among the coalition parties about how Geert Wilders should be dealt with.
PvdA leader Diederik Samsom told RTL7 that Prime Minister Mark Rutte was too soft on the PVV leader who said last week that The Hague would be better off with fewer Moroccans. “You don’t solve problems by saying that all Moroccans are a problem. You solve problems by approaching them,” Rutte said, which according to Samsom was weak. “I don’t like it at all,” the PvdA leader said, adding that at least vice Prime Minister Lodewijck Asscher dared to face Wilders head on. Samson said he himself thought Wilders’ statements were “sickening.” Samsom was not the only PvdA politican who took offense to Wilders’ attack on Moroccans. The statement had prompted party board member Fouad Sidali last week to compare the PVV leader with Adolf Hitler. Sidali retracted his comparison later, with insistence that Wilders should realize what kinds of emotions his statements cause. Obviously offended by the Hitler comparison, Wilders warned over the weekend that he would drag anyone else who likened him to the WWII mass-murderer to court. “I will no longer accept these abject, sickening comparisons to Hitler anymore. It’s a rude insult to PVV, PVV politicians and our voters,” he said. The PVV leader said that before Sidali apologized his lawyer had been ready to summon him to retract. Samsom was also not happy with Rutte’s analysis that PVV is more leftist than the SP. “PVV is as much on the right as the ledge in socio-economic fields,” he said.