Voters in Netherlands set for polls in one of three big tests for EU

AMSTERDAM: Up to 13 million Dutch people will vote tomorrow in a parliamentary election seen as a face-off between Prime Minister Mark Rutte and nationalist Geert Wilders, and as the first of three big tests this year of anti-establishment sentiment in the EU.

The Dutch vote will be followed by the French presidential election on April 23 and May 7 and the German parliamentary election on September 24.

Wilders may come out on top, cementing the influence of a politician who wants to ban the Qur’an, shut down mosques and upend his nation’s sleepy political scene.

Nervous leaders across Europe are looking to the Netherlands this week for clues about elections this year in France and Germany. There, anti-Islam, anti-EU candidates are also capitalising on fears about a wave of mostly Muslim refugees and migrants. Even if Wilders is barred from power by the wide range of parties that are refusing to co-operate with him, he has tugged his nation’s political discourse towards a far harder line on immigrants.

Anxious to capture Wilders voters, Rutte said this year that immigrants needed to work harder to fit into Dutch society or they should leave – a stark departure from a centuries-old Dutch tradition of acceptance.

“These elections are historic, because the Netherlands can choose if we want to give our land away further or if we are going to recapture it,” Wilders said this month.

Mainstream politicians shake their heads at Wilders’s contradictions, even as they scramble to match his common-person’s touch.

The man who is railing at the establishment is one of the longest-serving members of the Dutch parliament, a fixture of The Hague for nearly 20 years.