Translation column Dutch Public Intellectual Leon de Winter in De Telegraaf, 18 April 2023

What you say (hashtag to the Dutch version)

In his Thorbeckelezing in Zwolle last Friday, Pieter Omtzigt said, “The government can circumvent parliamentary control and take decisions elsewhere with impunity: there is a major flaw in the system here. (…)” The country can be run by regents, who can implement particularly bad decisions without too much resistance.

Omtzigt’s lecture covers those “particularly bad decisions”. Decisions on the corona crisis, for example, took place at the so-called Catshuis consultations, which avoided “built-in control mechanisms.” Omtzigt: “The government’s most important decisions, such as a lockdown, a curfew and a school closure have thus been taken in recent years in a body [the Catshuis consultation] that, according to the law or the constitution, does not exist at all, let alone have powers to take decisions.”

There are numerous such despairing statements in the lecture: “In case you think that decisions in the Netherlands are otherwise neatly taken by the government and parliament, I would be happy to tell you one day about the climate tables, where lobby groups are allowed to propose a climate agreement, which is adopted by the government.”

Distrust

Here are more of Omtzigt’s observations: (…) “Documents are withheld and documents are rarely delivered within the deadline: even the simplest WOB (Public Access Act) requests take an average of 111 days instead of the legal deadline of 21 days. (…) That is why I regard the withholding of the recordings of OMT (Outbreak Management Team, Covid19) meetings – the Parliament is not even allowed to listen to or view them confidentially – and the withholding of all communications between ministers using the exception ground with some suspicion. (…) Your receipts from 100 euros upwards will soon be transparent, while billions of VWS (Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport) expenses are not. Your telephone traffic is transparent, while decisions taken by ministers via SMS are secret. These processes offer a malicious government unprecedented opportunities, that much is clear.”

The picture Omtzigt paints cannot but lead to scepticism: it is not about political differences but about abuse of the system. We are introduced to a decision-making system that, if at all possible, no longer allows itself to be circumscribed by parliamentary control. MPs from coalition parties do not dare to act, and the media’s critical role cannot be fulfilled by withholding information, Omtzigt argues.

Undermining

Meanwhile, Justice Minister Yeşilgöz was working on a law seeking to tackle “organisations that undermine our rule of law through their activities. There is no place in our country for activities of organisations, such as lectures or activist speeches, whose aim is to incite members to abolish democracy (…). With new enforcement tools, we can better protect society from this.”

Such a law has questionable aspects because it could remove the freedom of speech of many; what violent voices is our government so afraid of that current laws are inadequate? We have long lived with Islamist, neo-Nazi and far-left extremism and our intelligence services know damn well which lunatics are capable of violence, so I wonder what the government wants with new legislation. It seems the regents want a greater grip on online communications. That, it seems to me, is what “new enforcement tools” are all about.

The AIVD (The General Intelligence and Security Service) has not been idle either. We heard in the media that in its annual report 2022, the AIVD states that the Netherlands has at least a hundred thousand people who believe we are ruled by an “evil elite”. In case you think those are all neo-Nazis, the report contains a dramatic nuance about the real size of the scum: “Although the composition of the Dutch movement keeps changing (…) the size still seems to consist of a few hundred supporters. Similar to last year.”

Omtzigt’s lecture tells us that there is a class of regents (I call them an elite) that is disconnected from the democratic process and cannot be held accountable. At the same time, as is indicated by Minister Yeşilgöz, those regents are working to circumscribe extremists, of whom there are not that many in practice, but for whom extreme legislation is being designed that can basically be applied to any form of rebellious, dissident opinions. And further, the AIVD accuses a hundred thousand citizens of believing that there is an “evil elite” – implicitly stating that the elite does not exist, let alone is evil.

Docile

In the Thorbeckelezing, I do find evidence that there is an elite of regents, who, as Omtzigt writes, “can implement particularly bad decisions without too much resistance.” The country has witnessed those “particularly bad decisions” in recent years while coalition members in parliament meekly followed the government. Omtzigt convincingly notes that this elite chronically violates the rules of democratic rule of law. What to call such an elite? And after his reading, according to the rules of the AIVD and Yeşilgöz, is Omtzigt now an extremist? What about me? And you? Should my emails and apps now be filtered? Or is that already happening?