The Dutch government has decided to resign after losing the support of its junior coalition partner in a row over Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said on Thursday.
The resignation follows a conflict within the coalition government about the way VVD minister Verdonk handled the controversy surrounding the citizenship of Somali-born Islam critic and former lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Just minutes before Balkenende announced in Parliament that the entire government would step down, the three ministers of junior coalition party D66 said they could no longer be part of a Cabinet with the controversial Verdonk.
After discussions in the Cabinet and the resignation of the three D66 ministers, Balkenende said: “The other ministers and junior ministers have seen this as a reason to hand in their resignations to the queen.”
The prime minister added that he would probably go to meet Queen Beatrix, the Dutch head of state, on Friday.
The resignation of the government could lead to new elections in October. However, there is also a slim chance the coalition parties will try to cobble together a minority government supported by various small opposition parties.
The D66 party pulled out of the government because Verdonk did not resign over the Hirsi Ali affair.
Verdonk announced in May that Hirsi Ali, a lawmaker known for her criticism of Islam who admitted publicly that she lied about her name and birth date on her asylum application, could not keep her Dutch citizenship.
After enormous political pressure from Parliament, Verdonk, nicknamed “Iron Rita” for her tough stance on immigration issues, softened her hard-line position on Hirsi Ali.
On Tuesday she announced that Hirsi Ali, who has since stepped down as an MP and is moving to the United States to work for a think tank, could keep her Dutch passport.
Verdonk used complicated legal reasoning to justify her turnaround, concluding that Hirsi Ali actually lied about lying about her name because she could legally use the name Ali under Somali law.
Hirsi Ali (36) gained international attention in 2004 after Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist. Van Gogh had produced a controversial film written by Hirsi Ali about the treatment of women in Islam.
‘Iron Rita’
A former prison warden, Verdonk is both celebrated and despised for her “rules are rules” attitude and decisive manner.
The 50-year-old mother of two is a latecomer to Dutch politics and joined the right-wing liberal VVD only in 2002. In 2003, Verdonk was named Immigration Minister and her no-nonsense attitude personified the answer of the established political parties to the rise of grassroots populist parties in The Netherlands.
Verdonk soon set herself apart from other ministers by her decisiveness and straight-talking manner.
“For too long our society believed that [asylum seekers] were to be pitied. That is not the case. They made a conscious choice to come here and must bear their own responsibility,” she said last year. “If we treat them as if they are needy, they will act like it. I hear stories of people just vegging out on the couch waiting for people to take care of them.”
The traditionally tolerant Netherlands, shaken by the brutal murder of filmmaker Van Gogh by a young radical Muslim in 2004, under Verdonk maintained an increasingly tough stance on immigration and integration of immigrants in Dutch society.
Among the policies championed by Verdonk was the expulsion of 26Â 000 failed asylum seekers, some of whom had been living in The Netherlands for more than 10 years, before 2007. She also ruled that homosexual asylum seekers from Iran could be sent back to their country despite the fact that homosexuality carries the death penalty there.
Internationally, Verdonk is best known for introducing a test for aspiring immigrants to prove their knowledge of Dutch culture and language before being allowed to stay the country. Germany now has a similar test and France is also following the Dutch initiative closely.
The minister also publicly spoke about imposing a ban on wearing a burka, an Islamic garment that covers a person from head to toe, in public and suggested that towns should introduce codes of conduct stipulation that only Dutch could be spoken in the streets.
She greatly disappointed Dutch football fans when she refused a request to grant citizenship to Salomon Kalou, born in Côte d’Ivoire, so he could play for the Dutch squad in the World Cup because she ruled he was not properly integrated into society.
“They say I am the toughest woman in The Netherlands, who takes barbaric measures,” the minister said in 2004.
Over time Verdonk, who has a degree in sociology and criminology, grew more confident in her role as minister and swapped her severe black suits for more colourful pink and red outfits.
“Rules are rules” is Verdonk’s mantra, which she readily repeats in the many debates that her proposals always provoke.
Her political style causes people to either love her of hate her. In December she was even voted most popular Dutch politician in a poll of 21Â 000 people who lauded her straight-talking manner and reliability. In the same poll Verdonk also came third in the list of most unpopular politicians. — AFP