Column | Fabers Zonnekonzinklijk Motto ‘I am policy’ was not a talk

Some bitter gratitude towards Minister Faber van Asylum and Migration (PVV) and Nominal Prime Minister Schoof is appropriate. With her refusal to give five Fatherlanders a ribbon because of their volunteer work for asylum seekers and his initial unwillingness to take into account in the Lower House about disagreement within the government, Faber emerged and joined Trumpism as polder students. With their behavior, Faber and pushed the core of the Wilders government revealed: contempt for the representation of the people on behalf of whom populism says he wants to speak and dedain for the king who honors countrymen.

Faber’s double -heartedness to first reveal the division and then to pour that they « 100 percent behind the Prime Minister« State does not stem from ‘amateurism’, as some MPs still trivialized on Tuesday. Her attitude is an expression of uncut antiparliamentarism. That then moved for a few hours on Wednesday to justify himself in parliament, only tough power politics seemed to be at first -class level, but also tends in that direction.

With their open or secret anti -parliamentarism, they appeal to the populist idea that there is only one people who speak with one voice through the leader. They have a brother dead from the constitutional starting point that in 150-fold the House of Representatives plays the polyphony of the bourgeoisie.

The fact that Faber lacks the talent to articulate her late -thundeness towards the room a little intelligent, says something about the intellectual level of the PVV. Such as the egocentrism of Schoof to think that diving away is a form of « situational leadership », illustrating his administrative ignorance and raises the question of whether he can be adequately advised by his counseling on the once high -quality Ministry of General Affairs.

But those are only considered side issues on the keper. The main thing is their public dedain for the constitutionally anchored variety of the Netherlands.

Fabers Zontekonzinklijke Motto « I am the policy » was not a talk but indeed policy. By advice from it Chapter for the civil orders – Formed by a purified director, general, lawyer and historian – she did not accord, she issued the ‘signal’ that there is a distinction between real and false Dutch people. In a while and those who are nevertheless committed to foreigners may be called traitors or popular enemies. It doesn’t stop. Schoof has given her the space to violate the constitutional order.

The ribbon affair may seem insignificant, she is not. Undermining the democratic constitutional state always starts with the undermining of the pluriform parliament. It starts with the legitimacy of the parliament to be ridiculed or even disputed, as Wilders did when he spoke about it in 2015 « Fake Parliament ». The strategic goal is always to paint the parliament as a talk house that the people do not represent. The next step may be that the order in the parliament is disturbed, first sporadically and then sometimes even systematically.

The end of the song is that parliamentarians roll through the benches and citizens lose their respect for the parliament. And then the fence is off the dam. Parliamentary democracy stands or falls with an elementary basis of trust, as authoritarian administration thrives on distrust. Faber is out. Schoof has offered her that space.

The parliamentary Democratic Netherlands can also become unmanageable. A seemingly trivial issue has revealed that danger this week.

Hubert Smeets is a journalist and historian. He writes a column every other week at this place.

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