Live By the Knife-in-the-Back…

Civitas, 30 June 2006

For a change, some good news courtesy of a report in today’s Times:
By last night tendering their resignations from the Dutch coalition government, three ministers belonging to the tiny coalition partner in it, the strangely named D-66 party, have brought it down. Their resignations forced the Dutch prime minister to tender his resignation, thereby most likely precipitating early elections.
The three ministers resigned out of their wholly justified opposition to the continued presence within the government of its immigration minister Rita Verdonk who had quite understandably incurred their wrath last month, along with that of many others, by having summarily stripped the Dutch MP and fellow Liberal party-member Ayaan Hirsi Ali of her citizenship for having lied when applying for asylum from Somalia many years earlier to escape a forced marriage.

What made Ms Verdonk’s decision so appalling, apart from the speed and harsh manner with which she delivered it, was that, several years earlier, when about to stand for election to the Dutch parliament, Ms Ali had admitted to her fellow party members her previous lie and been given the assurance it would no longer be held against her.
Ms Verdonk stabbed Ms Hirsi Ali in the back to prove her credentials as tough-minded in the process of making what turned out to be an abortive attempt to gain the leadership of her party in the hope thereby of becoming Holland’s first female prime-minister.
After that failed attempt, because of the unpopularity of her treatment of Ms Hirsi Ali, Ms Verdunk last Tuesday became obliged to reinstate Ms Hirsi Ali’s Dutch ctizenship when faced with the prospect of a vote in the Dutch parliament on a motion calling for her resignation which took place yesterday and which she managed to survive.
By tendering their resignations, the three ministers who resigned denied Ms Verdunk a government of which she could continue to be a part. It was a noble act of self-sacrifice on their part for which I am sure they will be handsomely repaid by Dutch voters come the next election there.
In recounting these recent events, I have the satisfaction of being able to refer readers to what I wrote here last month about Ms Verdonk’s appalling treatment at that time of Ms Hirsi Ali.
I am glad to see that Ms Verdonk has got the comeuppance she so richly deserves for her former ill-treatment of Ms Hirsi Ali.