I was considering making a thread about Uruzghan and the Dutch troops there and what the Dutch politics should decide/do but last night the goverment coalition of center right wing conservative CDA ("Christen Democratisch Appèl" or Christian Democrat Party), centrist left wing PvdA ("partij van de Arbeid" or Party of Labour) and centrist right wing conservative CU ("Christen Unie" or Christian Union) discontinued their coalition. The coalition has fallen.
So what was the problem? Let's see what happend recently:Well over the past weeks and months there were some major difficulties. Debates about raising the retirement (and thus retirement pensions) from 65 to 67 were a sensitive topic.
And more recently, at the start of this year, a commision looked into the topic of Iraq. This commision pointed out several flaws, problems and issues (such as "Minister President Balkenende (CDA) did not show any leadership in regards to this topic" , "The goverment coalition did not properly inform the parliament" , "The goverment supported a war on conditions -Findiing WMDs- that were proven false" and the goverments vision on Iraq (to support the war or not) for a large part was decided in a 1 hour brainstorm session between several ministers and goverment officials". In short, a pretty harsh set of conclusions. Miniser-president Jan-Peter Balkenende gave a press conference which basically set that the goverment coalition did not share the conclusions of this report and that it does not regret it's actions. This pissed of the PvdA, who said that the minister-president did NOT speak for the PvdA and thus also not in name of the coalition (as usually parties in a coalition come together and work out a shared view/vision/agreement and then make this public at the official view of the goverment coalition). They demanded that Jan-peter would give a new press conference in which he would retract his previous statements and make a new one. Tentions rised, the coalition was said to be inches away of crashing and tumblign over the edge. After over a week of back chamber debates over this sensitive issue, finally a new statement was made in the form of a letter that was essenstially a major compromise, using language that neither outright reject, nor outright supported the conclusions of the Iraq report. Something along the lines of "With the knowledge we have know we may have acted differently, but with made the decisions on Iraq qith the knowledge we had back then".
The past week: Aghanistan is the dominant topic:Then came Aghanistan, the NATO sent a letter to the coalition goverment, requesting the Dutch to extend their troop deployement for one additional year. These type of official requests aren't sent before the NATO knows that , unofficially, that the country in question will accept the request. Apparantly the NATO thought that the Dutch would accept this request, the Dutch goverment apparantly gave the impression it would accept: Various officials had a meeting, including the minister of foreign affairs (a CDA guy). The PvdA leader (Bos, minister of finance in this goverment) was not at this meeting though the CDA said he was aware of it taking place. Towards the end of the day Bos heard that these officials agreed to consider a one year extention of the Aghanistan (Uruzghan) mission and was not amused, as the PvdA's vision ever since the elections was "We will pull out in 2010 no matter what". So he contacted either/both the minister of foreign affairs and the minister president (both CDA members) to let them know that the PvdA was not amused and would not accept an extention. Two days later the official NATO request came in and then the blame game and finger poiting started.
The PvdA openly critized the CDA, especially the minister of foreign affairs. The pvdA and CDA ministers started to oublically show their disagreement. The PvdA stuck to the "we always said we would never agree to an extention, the CDA should know and did know/realize this" and the CDA said that the PvdA should me stubborn and cancel a mission that finally seems to start getting some results (the Dutch approach starting to pay off and becoming less of a war/fight mission and more of a rebuild and training mission, the latter always was the official intend of the Dutch coalitions, past and present) and that the PvdA knew about this meeting the minister of foreign affairs had and shouldn't say they didn't know and were suprised and offended by it's outcome.
So the CDA and PvdA tried to seek out a solution. The CDA insisted on staying in Uruzghan and that this option should remain open, the Christian Union (minor coalition party) wanted to pull out but agreed to keep the option open, and the PvdA wanted to pull out and therefor not even keep this option open (a simple "No, we either pull out or consider deploying rebuilding and training forces elsewhere in Afghanistan, any place were our troops won't have to engage into any combat"). No compromise or agreement could be reached, no party would give an inch and thus the PvdA pulled the plug and stepped out of the coalition.
What does this mean?For the goverment this means that they will resign, Minister-President Balkenende will contact the Queen ASAP (she's in Austria on holiday right now) and officially offer the goverments resignation (which she then will accept, no royal has ever declined a resignation as this would eb quite pointless and silly). The goverment will become The current coalition (ministers and such) become "demissionair" (from the word "demissie" or "dismissal") meaning it's a in a state of dismissal, an outgoing coalition. The parliament won't be allowed to vote on controversial issues anymore and set out new elections to be held 3 months or more from now.
Right now the local township elections are comming up (March 3rd), these were already affected by the national goverment but the national political status may become more dominant (regardless of the fact that these are local elections and that national politics/politicians has nothing to do with local issues). We will probably see the campaiging transfer fluently from local into national elections.
Several parties are kinda popular, this being the left wing SP (Socialistische Partijor Socialist Party), centrist D66 (Democraten '66 or Democrats '66, left leaning on social issues, right leaning [liberalism] on economic and politcal items) and righ wing PVV (Partij van de Vrijheid, Party of Freedom, run by Geert Wilders). So we may either see a centrum left coalition come into power, consiting of SP (Socialst party), PvdA(Party of Labour), GroenLinks (GreenLeft) and D66 (Democrats '66). Or, more likely, a right wing coalition of CDA (Christian Democrats), VVD ("Volksparty voor Vrijheid en Democratie" or Peoplesparty for Freedom and Democracy, a liberal(ism) party) and PVV (Party of Freedom).
So what about Uruzgan / Afghanistan?As I said, any controversial topics (any bill that does not have a large majority support and will almost unanimously be accepted by parliament) will be put "in the fridge", on hold, for the new parliament to vote on. It is likely that the new parliament will decide to redraw from Afghanistan as planned. The current mission ends at midnight of July 31st 2010, after which a redrawl will start, all troops will have to be out before January 1st 2011. Though if the new pailiament takes seat around the summer (with elections in June this could be possible) they may decide to support the Afghanistan mission in some other form such as a partial withdrawl and focussing more on rebuilding and training as promised three years ago (and with was much more of a combat mission then any party really ever intended or forsaw). Ofcourse there are concners about what the world (NATO, EU nations, USA, ...) may think of us. It's likely that the NATO and USA won't be amused even though the Dutch feel like they made a fair contribution for such a small country (having said an example which currently is being copied by others in Afghanistan, pushing our armed forces to the limit) and that perhaps we will have to take a back seat again like other smaller "less important" nations, not being invited for the G20 summit and so on.
How about me? my opinion?I'm split. I lack the knowledge to establish what would be the most wise approach in Afghanistan. How much of a difference could we make in Afghanistan in one more year in either Uruzgan or elsewhere? I don't want to let our progress go to waste, but if our results will be lost whether we pull out now or next year, what use would it be? I'd like to see our results paying of, which possibly would mean that NATO would have to stay for several more years to gradually train and setup Afghan authorities (police and army). We have done a lot already overthere, we already extended our troop deployement once and made quite clear that this was quite a burden and controversial topic from the very start so the international community should not be displeased with us.
As for the political side: I'm not suprised. Politcally it made sense to pull the plug. During the elections the CDA has accused the PvdA of flip flopping, following popular opinion rather then sticking to it's vision/opinion/program. This may have costed the PvdA voters (who went to the Socialist Party instead), the PvdA has "watered down the wine" several times in the past three years already and for them it made sense to draw a line and refuse to make many more compromises, especially over such sensitive issues such as a topic that gradually has lost a large amount of public support and to which the PvdA always had said "no, we will pull out". Perhaps they could have compromised IF the CDA had made more consessions of it's own AND if the CDA wouldn't have hammered on flip flopping so much. For the PvdA not to lose (m)any more voters it was time to stick to it's principals, it's party program.
It's kinda funny, although sad that minister-president Balkenende now has all 4 (four) goverment coalitions collapse beneath him. Balkenende I, II and III went down, and now his latest ship, Balkenende IV, sunk aswell. Ouch!
If all these names confuse you, here is the official goverments website on this coalition (may be updated soon though, currently it doesn't state that this goverment coaltion has fallen):
Balkenende IV Government - Government.nlTLDNR? Summary:Dutch coalition goverment of Christan party and labour party collapses over aditional Uruzgan/afghanistan mission extention after a very tense set of weeks if not months over various issues.