NETHERLANDS: Voter fatigue and pragmatic political consensus leave the topics of immigration and integration on the sidelines of elections in the Netherlands

Immigration, integration and the real nature of tolerance in the famously laid-back country of the Netherlands had dominated political debate and sparked agonized soul-searching for the past four years. In retaliation for the murder of fim-maker Theo Van Gogh in 2004, a dozen Muslim schools and mosques were burned or bombed. Now the issue appears to have left the political centre-stage - pushed to the wings by a combination of voter fatigue, pragmatic political consensus and economic priorities. But some say this shift does not mean the question has gone away - while some Muslims welcome the fact that immigration is not the hot-button issue it has been, they say underlying problems of integration have not disappeared. "Immigrants are especially worried about what happened after the killing of Theo van Gogh. because then it became very common to just point at the immigrants for every problem there was in society and immigrants are very angry about that," Jorge Cuartas said to Reuters and added: "It's always been about immigrants and now when we have the elections, we see that this issue is not on the agenda." Indigenous Dutch voters seem to agree, blaming politicians for being scared of raising immigration issue. "The issue isn't covered at all on the elections, at the moment. Why? I don't know, because they think it's too risky to say something about it. It still is a very very complicated issue and it will always be as long as politicians are such hypocrites," said one Dutch voter. Anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders may argue that the major parties are acting "irresponsibly" in neglecting the subject, but he has failed to sway Dutch public opinion. Polls see him gaining between 1 and 10 seats out of a possible 150, while the country's other two far-right parties (including Marco Pastors' party "One Nederland") are unlikely to enter parliament. "Islam is a violent religion, Islam is a dangerous religion, we should not try to believe in European or moderate Islam because it will not exist in the next ten thousand years, but let's invest in persons, let's invest in Muslims, let them try to assimilate into our society. Those are the subjects that we should talk about, those are the policies that we need to have positive sides and negative sides, we should both do that but this is something totally politically incorrect even in the Netherlands today, that's also one of the reasons that none of the other parties are talking about it, they are claiming that the voters don't find it interesting anymore unlike two years ago, but this is just a poor excuse not to face up to the problems that need tough solutions," Wilders told Reuters last week. Famous Dutch tolerance crumbled and religious tensions heightened with the murder of film director Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-Moroccan islamic militant in 2004. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somali-born Dutch politician, renounced her Muslim faith and wrote the script for Van Gogh's film "Submission", the film for which he was killed for. Hirsi Ali's personal immigration paperwork confusion -- almost losing her Dutch citizenship due to internal power struggle with immigration minister Rita Verdonk -- recently caused the entire government to fall and Hirsi Ali to leave Netherlands for a U.S. think-tank in Washington. Politicians might also fear losing immigrant votes in a country where 10 percent of a population of 16 million are described as having non-Western roots. This includes one million Muslims, mainly from Morocco and Turkey, who are concentrated in cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague. The two main parties', who have almost identical stances on integration, are running almost even -- Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's centre-right Christian Democrats (CDA) had a slight lead over the Labour party (PvdA) last week. Surveys show the Dutch are more worried about their wallets than the state of their multicultural social model. Tough new integration laws have also deprived a splintered far-right of its traditional rhetoric on the subject. Integration became a key issue ahead of the 2002 general elections after flamboyant and openly gay political maverick Pim Fortuyn shattered taboos with his anti-Islam, anti-immigration rhetoric. Fortuyn was gunned down by an animal rights activist just days before the vote and mainstream parties have since adopted many of his ideas, such as demanding that immigrants take language and citizenship tests. The result is that the very country which long prided itself on being a pioneer for unconventional policies on prostitution and drugs is now pioneering some of Europe's toughest integration and entry laws, with its neighbours watching keenly for clues on how to tackle their own integration issues.

ITN Source | November 16, 2006

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