CDA leader Henri Bontenbal open to becoming Dutch Prime Minister if his party tops polls

If the CDA becomes the largest party at the next parliamentary elections, then the party’s leader, Henri Bontenbal, will be willing to become prime minister. “Then I will do that,” he said on the TV show Pauw & De Wit on Tuesday.

Bontenbal said he wouldn’t shy away from it, but he also called the job “not something to dream about. It’s an extremely demanding position. So it’s not something you just take on or aspire to.”

Maybe the people who want this job the most are the people least suited to it, Bontenbal said. “It’s also a role where you give up a lot, but it’s an important position,” said the CDA leader, one he wouldn’t shy away from.

The elections for the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, are on Wednesday, October 29. The CDA is not currently the largest party in the polls, but its position has been rising significantly over the last few months and weeks.

On Monday evening, VVD leader Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius said she “doesn’t see it happening” that the VVD will enter a coalition after the elections that also includes GroenLinks-PvdA.

Regarding whether to lean left or right, Bontenbal said on Tuesday at Pauw & De Wit: “That whole left-right frame doesn’t suit me at all. In this campaign, I’m trying to tell my own story, the story of the CDA. And then it’s up to other people to attach whatever labels they want.”

Now that so many parties are polling below 30 seats, it will be “very complicated” after October 29, the CDA leader said. Instead of talking about exclusions, he expects that compromises will need to be made after the elections.

“I have no desire to spend months forming a government after the elections.”