Wilders' iron grip on PVV slipping as local factions break with party

The foundations under the PVV seem to be cracking. In the past week, members of three local factions have decided to jump ship. According to the factions, Geert Wilders and the parliamentary PVV ignore them for months on end, and then suddenly want to jump in and dictate how they do things, AD reports.

PVV candidates from Purmerend, Urk, and Kampen have decided to withdraw from the party after a row with the PVV leadership in The Hague. In Kampen, the entire faction has withdrawn from the party, according to the newspaper.

“We’ve all had pretty much the same experience,” Arja Brink, active for the PVV in Purmerend, told the newspaper. “We’d been preparing for the local elections for months. We didn’t hear anything for a long time, but last Thursday, we suddenly received a message from the national PVV: So-and-so and so-and-so have to be removed from your electoral list. I can’t just kick out perfectly capable people, can I?”

Brink protested, but only received critical feedback from the national PVV. “The message was: ‘We are going to do it this way.’ I said: We’re not going to do it this way at all. These are good candidates; we’re involving a lot of people, which is perhaps not PVV-like. This is a huge disappointment. People are being dismissed for no reason.”

After the elections, Brink will continue with a new local party. The same is happening in Urk. In Kampen, the former PVV members are still considering how to proceed.

The fact that three PVV factions have jumped ship in one week is remarkable for the far-right party. Local factions have split before, but never so many in such a short period.

For the PVV’s entire existence, Wilders has served as its one and only leader. All other representatives are expected to fall in line. Wilders typically gives the local factions free rein until there’s trouble or when an election approaches. Then the party leadership suddenly intervenes in candidates or platform points, usually sidelining candidates that are critical or too willing to collaborate with other parties.

Neither Wilders nor the PVV’s parliamentary faction responded to AD’s questions about the rift with local factions.