Former Minister can't work with PVV; Quits Public Health Ministry

Former minister Guujse ter Horst has quit from the Ministry of Public Health, Welfare, and Sports because she cannot work with PVV Minister Fleur Agema and State Secretary Vicky Maeijer, now in charge at the Ministry. “I couldn’t imagine sitting at the table with them and still being effective,” she told the NPO 1 radio program Spraakmakers.

For the past 18 months, Ter Horst was the administrative manager of the “Participate with no limits” program at the Ministry of Public Health. The program aims to make society more accessible to people with disabilities and ensure that the Netherlands complies with the UN Convention on Disability.

“Administrative manager is a position of confidence. You must have the confidence of the minister, but also the other way around,” Ter Horst said on the program. She does not have the confidence or trust in PVV Minister Fleur Agema and State Secretary Vicky Maeijer. They both represent a party with which she has “no affinity whatsoever,” she said.

Ter Horst said that she cannot work with people who promote ideas like the “de-Islamization” of the Netherlands, not taking in asylum seekers, and a Nexit. “I can’t imagine sitting at the table with someone like that without getting into a heated argument within five minutes. I couldn’t be effective in that role anymore,” she explained her decision to quit.

Ter Horst is not the first to abandon the Schoof I Cabinet ship over concerns about the PVV’s ideologies. Shortly before the new Cabinet took office, NSC member and University of Twente lecturer Ronald Voorn announced his resignation as the leader of the party's science think tank. Voorn specifically noted his objections to several Cabinet members. He did not mention names, but his resignation came days after new PVV Ministers Marjolein Faber (Asylum) and Reinette Klever (Foreign Trade) became discredited for promoting the racist repopulation conspiracy theory in the past.