#1 Dutch Right of Center Party Wins
Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2010 4:39 am
NYTimes
[quote]Political light-years ago, let’s say back in March, the name of the next Dutch prime minister was going to be Job Cohen, former mayor of Amsterdam and a Man of the Left depicted as having particular skills in smoothing out tensions between the Dutch and the Muslim immigrants who increasingly populate their large cities.
Since then, Mr. Cohen’s decline has come at warp speed.
With the Netherlands voting in national elections June 9, every poll since May 14 has shown the Liberals, a right-of-center party that hasn’t chosen a prime minister since before World War I, as the clear winner of the most parliamentary seats.
Its margin over Mr. Cohen’s Labor Party has grown since he stumbled in television debates last week and twice could not answer a question involving the specific cost of a category of voters’ health care fees — the same figure he had failed to provide in response to essentially the same question three days earlier.
It wasn’t a concession, but Mr. Cohen gave an indication of how astronomical a long shot the notion of a Labor victory has become in a newspaper interview over the weekend. Asked whether a second-place finish would be good, he replied, “It can be. Then I’ll be in Parliament as head of the Labor grouping and not in the government.â€
[quote]Political light-years ago, let’s say back in March, the name of the next Dutch prime minister was going to be Job Cohen, former mayor of Amsterdam and a Man of the Left depicted as having particular skills in smoothing out tensions between the Dutch and the Muslim immigrants who increasingly populate their large cities.
Since then, Mr. Cohen’s decline has come at warp speed.
With the Netherlands voting in national elections June 9, every poll since May 14 has shown the Liberals, a right-of-center party that hasn’t chosen a prime minister since before World War I, as the clear winner of the most parliamentary seats.
Its margin over Mr. Cohen’s Labor Party has grown since he stumbled in television debates last week and twice could not answer a question involving the specific cost of a category of voters’ health care fees — the same figure he had failed to provide in response to essentially the same question three days earlier.
It wasn’t a concession, but Mr. Cohen gave an indication of how astronomical a long shot the notion of a Labor victory has become in a newspaper interview over the weekend. Asked whether a second-place finish would be good, he replied, “It can be. Then I’ll be in Parliament as head of the Labor grouping and not in the government.â€
