Stem!
The Netherlands will have general elections 15th of March. No, it will not be live on TV all over the world, stock exchanges will not care and I doubt Putin will involve himself in this one. Still to me it does matter. Although I live almost at the other side of the planet and don’t have many practical implications from the result I am proud of my origins and like to stay proud. Which is why I wanted to spend some time writing this story.
Ever heard of Geert Wilders? If you’re none-Dutch but know the name of any politician in my home country, the answer is probably yes. He is infamous abroad because he has been talking crap for years and years in Dutch politics. When Trump was still groping women and avoiding taxes, Wilders was already way ahead of him demeaning all foreigners in The Netherlands. Like most populist, right wing politicians, he mainly focuses on Muslims as most populists do. However the PVV, the name of the political party vehicle he runs, also gathered fame through setting up a hotline for calling in problems with Polish workers in the Netherlands. And Polish people are about as Christian, white and European as it gets.
I am not going to repeat all the stunts he pulled since 2004, they are documented anywhere. All those years his rhetoric and politics have been downplayed. I hope the win of Trump November 2016 was a wake up call in that respect. The majority of the people in the world should understand now rhetoric might be more dangerous as it seemed and all horrible periods in world history started with rhetoric.
Nevertheless the PVV currently is by far the biggest party in polls running up to the elections. So an extremely large portion of my country men knows he might actually do what he says, he has been clearly xenofobic and still they choose to give their vote to him. That really frightens me. He is not just a populist talking nonsense and people reward him for it, no, they actually agree with the crap he comes up with. And they don’t care that it’s totally unclear how he will put all of his ideas into practice if he gets the chance. The show “ Zondag met Lubach” made painfully clear he probably has no idea either.
I haven never understood why I have priority rights to live in The Netherlands. More in general I don’t get the concept of having higher rights in a geographical location just as a result of chance. The older I am getting the fewer things I really know. One fact however I am still very sure of: I had no choice nor influence in picking the place and family I was born in. I am very happy and grateful chance provided me with a loving family and country to start my life. I wish everybody would start out as easy and get my opportunities just by being born. Unfortunately that is not the case. But switching it around doesn’t make sense to me. Me being born somewhere somehow gives me the right to tell all other people looking for a better life to piss off and continue starving where they came from?
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Currently I am a foreigner. I never really realized exactly what that meant until I moved to Singapore. Quite stupid considering my wife is German, I already did an internship for 6 months in Buenos Aires and I have traveled a lot over the years. Still it never sunk in until I moved to Asia. It helps I look very different from the majority of the people in the streets of Singapore. Having to go through all kinds of hoops to get a permit to be in a country makes a big difference. And building up Investeur along the way having to deal with restrictions on what I can and cannot do is a wake up call as well.
But I am foreigner by choice and ability. We have income, we are well educated and have skills wanted by employers. We also didn’t need to go here to have a happy life since we already had one. It was a dream we could fulfill and so far we are happy we did. Since we went for the adventure and the experience I do try to learn the local culture, understand the sometimes very different opinions and I am starting to get a feeling of how different perspectives are.
The move has made me realize what a very specific place The Netherlands are and how not standard the Dutch culture is. Very obvious in hindsight, but not obvious at all if you never have had the experience of being in an another surrounding for a longer time as I currently am. Because of this realization I have also come to understand better how damaging closing of the Netherlands for the rest of the world will be. Our little flat corner in the north of Europe is extremely small on a global scale and the only reason it has been successful is because we realized that a few hundred years ago and went looking for new opportunities which we found in places like Singapore for example. This still drives our country. There is no need for the port of Rotterdam, Schiphol or the Zuid As if we only do business with people which are like us. We can manage and run that with a business park the size of say Nieuwegein. We have top logistics, universities, development etc. because Dutch companies make piles and piles of money in foreign countries from people very different then us. In Singapore alone 1200 Dutch companies have offices!
Ok, but you were trying to make a point about the elections? Yes. A lot of people in the Netherlands are beyond the point of wanting to understand what you just read. They want to get rid of the politicians who promise something before the elections and do something different after the elections. Although I don’t think that is how it actually works I do understand that frustration. But my opinion or arguments are not going to help to convert those people. They are set on the idea that only one person will make things different and unfortunately his name is Geert Wilders.
You just read this article, so I am asuming you are a little interested in politics, The Netherlands or possibly some of my arguments. Whatever made you read till the end, it is totally fine if you hate all the established parties, including D66 which I support. But please, use the right you have to choose out of 27 possibilities on the 15th of March 2017 for something constructive. The Stemwijzer can help you to sift through all those options and shows you how your opinions will be translated into policy.
Lot’s of wisdom to everybody in The Netherlands on the 15th. I am going to the letterbox know to cast my vote :)
