I’m currently at university in Groningen, and I’ve been noticing lots of political signs around lately as well as television debates (that I can’t understand). Could you possibly summarize what’s been happening in terms of politics and elections in the Netherlands for me?

All those signs and posters you are seeing are most likely related to the next elections, which are taking place on March 2nd. They are to elect the members of the States Provincial, which, in The Netherlands, is the second highest level of government, after the National.

Each province has it’s own Provinciale Staten, which are elected every four years and it is formed by members that are not paid and who should have full time jobs, aside from their involvement in provincial politics.

If you could read Dutch, you would see that the Provincial campaign is pretty different from the National because the Provincial doesn’t have much political maneuvering power. Basically, their areas of competence are:

• Land management, specifically regional zoning laws;
• transport, regional infrastructure and regional public transport;
• economy and agriculture;
• environment and conservation;
• recreation, welfare and culture;
• control over water boards and the finances of municipalities.

This means you see less (almost non existent, actually) anti immigrant or anti Islam rhetoric in this campaign (they reserve that one for both National and City Council elections, as those two areas of government are the ones who hold the fate of “us undesirables” in their hands). Instead, the Provincial campaign is an exercise in presenting bureaucratic measures to the general public in ways that people believe are attractive, related to them and necessary (incidentally, all parties are failing at this, the campaign for Provincial seems to be driven by a bunch of dry, dimwitted guys that keep yapping about bus lines in a monotone). So, in brief, most people don’t care much about these elections.

The reason most parties are being vocal is because they need media presence to counter act the contemporary disease of Dutch politics: Geert Wilders’ populist party. In a stroke of political genius and disgraceful rhetoric (a simultaneous achievement I had rarely seen up to now), he even managed to make this campaign slightly entertaining for a grand total of 45 seconds when his party released a simplified platform for people with developmental disabilities (something long due in Dutch politics, that I believe every party should have, but the PVV managed to corrupt with their usual alienating, patronizing and overall disgusting discourse).

My husband is the campaign manager for this party for Amsterdam West, but alas, I am not voting for their number one candidate. Not only that, I refuse to support her candidacy in any way, for reasons that are both too long to explain here and too annoying for me to elaborate on. I like this party, although I am not officially a member. There are a couple of points I disagree with in their platform and that’s why I haven’t yet joined as an official member. However, my reality is quite pathetic in this country: there are few political options, aside from this one, that actively takes the side of immigrants to prevent further stigmatization and tokenization. It is a disappointing reality and even the left (especially, the left, I am looking at you, ugly dinosaur called Socialist Party), have co-opted immigrants to favor an ever increasing voter base easily seduced by populist tactics. The Green Party under the leadership of Femke Halsema was my favorite, but she retired from politics a few weeks ago and I’ve been left stranded ever since.

So, that’s what you are seeing in Groningen. Just the usual ramping up towards the elections.

For the past decade and a half I have been making all my content available for free (and never behind a paywall) as an ongoing practice of ephemeral publishing. This site is no exception. If you wish to help offset my labor costs, you can donate on Paypal or you can subscribe to Patreon where I will not be putting my posts behind a lock but you'd be helping me continue making this work available for everyone. Thank you.  Follow me on Twitter for new post updates.