Column | Wilders is busy becoming the new Pieter Omtzigt

Geert Wilders bluffed when he told the rig of the richel on Monday that his patience was up? That his limit was reached? Or did he only mean half and was it a transparent attempt to reassure his dissatisfied followers?

As a void toy of that richel, I would like to offer a new interpretation of Wilders’ maneuver here. He comes down to this: Wilders himself does not know whether or not he bluffed. He is in a serious state of confusion. Last week he read in De Telegraaf A critical message about a swelling flow of immigration to the Netherlands: 130,000 migrants have been added since April 2024. And that still, De Telegraaf added bitterly, « since the start » strictest asylum policy ever « .

Since then, Wilders desperately wonders what to do. Stay in the government coalition or not? In the polls he has already ended up under GroenLinks/ PvdA and now also writes ‘his’ newspaper mockingly about him. Two souls start to stir rebeat in his political breast.

One says: « Hood with it, as quickly as possible. Nothing can be achieved here anymore. A party like NSC will always continue to be. » The other states: « What do you achieve with stopping? You will become a political paria again. Nobody, not even the VVD, will ever want to form a government with you. You will have lost your authority for good, also abroad. You will miss that! How nice did you not like to hang out the big boy of Dutch politics and le pen?

Wilders cannot settle his battle for the time being. He does what he blames for his political enemy, Pieter Omtzigt: he continues to hesitate. That is why he threatens considerably, but he is shocked when someone calls it threatening. That is why he attacks the policy of his own minister, Faber, without blaming her. He is in a split and can no longer come up. What nobody had expected is now taking place: Wilders is busy becoming the new Pieter Omtzigt. One day he wants to « get out », the next day he changes his mind.

When a retirement reporter of RTL4 confronted him at the press conference with his two -way behavior in relation to Faber, he responded and cut off her following questions: « If you don’t let me talk, I will not answer. » Faber is his Achilles heel. He realizes that it is his weakest minister and that she will always work in my nests, but he can no longer drop her without his own loss of face.

What will he do in the end? Even though he doubts fiercely and he doesn’t know it himself, I dare to take a prediction. Everything depends on new polls. Polls are the lust and problems with his political life. He will not give Frans Timmermans a deeper fall of the PVV. He knows that the asylum issue is still important for the average Dutch voter, so important that he can also win new elections with it. Rather the uncrowned opposition champion than a steering trailer in the government – so Geert Wilders will end in Dutch politics.

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