International

“An authoritative person should take look at how the different parties see the election result,” SP leader Jan Marijnissen told journalists gathered at the national press centre in Nieuwspoort on Friday. Someone should be found who is respected on all sides and this person should spend a few days listening to each parliamentary group, finding out which parts of their own programmes they see as open to negotiation and what coalition of parties they would prefer to see taking part in the first round of talks aimed at forming a government.

The parliamentary elections held yesterday in the Netherlands led to a veritable political earthquake. The biggest winner was the SP, which grew from nine to twenty-five seats in Parliament's 150-strong lower house, the country's main legislative body. The two parties of the outgoing governing right-wing coalition, the Christian Democratic CDA and the free market liberals of the VVD, lost between them a total of nine seats and thus the majority needed to continue in power. There is, however, no left majority either, for while the SP gained a total of sixteen seats, the social democratic PvdA (Labour Party) dropped from forty-two to thirty-three, with the Green Left falling from eight to seven. A coalition of centre-right CDA and centre-left PvdA also lacks a majority and would not be possible without the cooperation of other parties. The party founded by the right-wing populist leader Pim Fortuyn, gunned down during the general election campaign of 2002, lost all of its MPs and will no longer be represented in the lower house.