Populist party is “undemocratic” says top candidate in resignation

New nationalist party FvD lost another member, the third this week. On Friday morning Susan Teunissen announced on Twitter that she canceled her membership to the party because she can not possibly conform to the course the FvD has taken. She also accused the party of being undemocratic.

"In view of the course that the FvD has taken and to which I can not possibly conform, I canceled my membership this morning. The way in which the party management deals with constructive criticism is far from democratic", Teunissen wrote on the social media platform.

Teunissen was third on the FvD's candidate list for the parliamentary election last year. The party came out of the election with two parliamentary seats, filled by FvD leader Thierry Baudet and lawyer Theo Hiddema.

On Monday Baudet expelled two other members from the FvD - Robert de Haze Winkelman and his wife Betty Jo Wevers. They tried to seize power in the FvD, the party said in a statement. De Haze Winkelman responded to his expulsion on Twitter: "It is a bloody shame that a party that claims to want to restore democracy is conducting a reign of terror in its own party and that every member who wants to change something is immediately put down as an enemy of the party."

On Tuesday three other prominent members in the FvD also criticized the democratic quality of the party, according to NOS. In a letter to the party members Gert Reedijk, Arthur Legger and Freek-Jan Berkhout suggested that party democracy be restored by having more than three people in the party management and restoring the provincial teams.