Dutch politics deadlocked as small parties proliferate

Politics are in deadlock in the Netherlands following general elections, with a new government nowhere in sight and a myriad of small parties eating away at traditional power bases.

Incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte has had to put off forming the next cabinet until after the summer holidays, leaving the outgoing government to handle routine business.

With no clear winners after the vote in March and more small parties than ever in the 150seat Lower House, the Dutch “polder model” of consensus politics is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success, experts say.

Ten of the 18 parties now in parliament hold five seats or fewer — making the political landscape more fragmented than ever and further complicating the fraught process of building the next government.

New parties include the progressive, proeuropean Volt and JA21, a split-off from the populist Forum for Democracy, which garnered three seats each.

“The political sphere is withdrawing moreand-more into itself, afraid of one another, afraid of the ideas of others,” said Laurens Dassen, who leads Volt’s MPS in parliament.

But he said he believed even three seats, effectively 2.5 per cent of the total vote of more than 10 million, could shake up things in parliament. “In fact, three is a lot,” he said. Analysts however said three seats very seldom carry enough weight.

The proliferation of small parties and the absence of an electoral threshold inevitably lead to long periods of negotiation which could end in a stalemate and even fresh polls, analysts say.

This is precisely the Gordian knot that awaits Rutte.

His Liberal centre-right VVD party won 34 seats while the progressive D66 of Foreign Trade Minister Sigrid Kaag came second with 24.

The political sphere is withdrawing more-and-more into itself, afraid of one another, afraid of the ideas of others

LAURENS DASSEN Leader of Volt MPS in parliament