CDA leader lashes out at Cabinet, "lacks sense of responsibility"

CDA leader Henri Bontenbal has lashed out at the Cabinet at a congress of his party. He feels that the governing team of PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB lacks a sense of responsibility. According to him, there has been "concrete rot" in the coalition from the start.

The largest governing party, the PVV, is not delivering what it promised, says Bontenbal. All voters get from this party is a “daily dose of rudeness, insults and harsh language to disguise their dilettantism and lack of responsibility”.

But the VVD also gets a dig. It makes everything possible because it "watches indifferently as the PVV makes a puppet show of the national government, but in the meantime has lost its own ideals". This Cabinet and this coalition are mainly concerned with survival, concludes the CDA leader.

The party met in Zwolle on Saturday. The Christian Democrats, who have five seats in the lower house of Dutch parliament, are on their way out of the valley in the polls. In some polls, the number of seats has already doubled. Bontenbal wants to bring the party back to the top with the traditional CDA narrative of values and norms, among other things.

He also addressed the attacks on Maccabi Tel Aviv football supporters in Amsterdam. According to Bontenbal, this shows that “the integration of some groups of Dutch people is failing”. He speaks of an “integration crisis”. There are “red lines that are being crossed and endanger coexistence itself”.

The CDA chairman sees indifference as one of the causes of the lack of integration. “It is the result of not wanting to invest in a common history, a common identity, a common morality.” And the Cabinet and the coalition lack the will to do something about it, according to Bontenbal.