MIXED MESSAGE :

Dutch Christian Democrats Win (Robert Wielaard, May 15, 2002, Associated Press)

In a dramatic shift to the right, Dutch opposition parties won big in Wednesday's elections, including the Christian Democrats and the movement of a slain populist candidate.

Riding a wave of discontent with the country's governing socalist, the Christian Democrats were expected to wind up with 43 seats – up 14 from their current holding in the 150-seat parliament.

With 88.6 percent of the vote counted, party leader Jan Peter Balkenende declared that he was "ready to take on the responsibility" of forming a government.

The upstart party of slain right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn was set to sweep into the legislature with 26 seats – a remarkable feat for a political force that did not exist a few months ago.

Prime Minister Wim Kok's governing socialists were seen plunging from 45 seats to 23, and his Liberal allies from 38 to also to 23, according to the results.

The outcome was a severe defeat for Kok's coalition that brought the Dutch peerless growth since 1994, but was punished for ignoring public concerns about drugs, immigration, welfare abuse and lax law enforcement.

It's always difficult to tell just what an electorate was trying to say when they went to the polls. Typically it's easier to discern what they opposed than what they favor. That last sentence suggests that the Dutch at least partially rejected the kind of social permissiveness that Pim Fortuyn seems to have liked personally, though oddly enough this rejection served his party well because you can always convince folks to blame the immigrants for drugs and crime, instead of themselves. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 16, 2002 3:35 PM