[Reader-list] On the resignation of the Dutch cabinet

[Patrice Riemens]

Quotting Mr Wim Kok, the outgoing PM:

"The International community is anonymous, and hence unaccountable in 
practice. My governement is not, and can, and shall, shoulder 
responsibility."

Great and admirable words, which should be respected as such - and so is 
the deed, the resignation of a government on what are ultimately purely 
moral grounds. 

However, this should not silence voices of criticism, and those who note 
that there are several elements at play which seriously discount this 
noble gesture. In an arbitrary order:

General (parliamentary) elections are coming up in now three weeks time,
where the current coalition, and 'traditional politics' in general are
severely challenged by an upstart political leader bent on 'cleaning the
mess', and voters seem otherwise unmotivated to caste a vote at all
(somewhat akin to the situation in France).

The credibility of politics and the governement has been gravely eroded by
several previous 'scandals' (The explosion of the fireworks factory in
Enschede, the devastating fire in a cafe in Volendam on new years eve, the
'apocalypse cow' subsequent to the MCD scare etc ) where despite scores of
deaths (lakhs in the case of those unhappy cows), no politician took the
consequences and resigned.

Now the festering sore of Srebrenica, the accounting for which had been 
dithered about for over six years, and when it finally came, was 
experienced by many as apologetic and unconsequential (the survivors found 
it outright outrageous) was just too much to swallow.

So there were many reasons to 'make a stand'. That the stand is unequally
endorsed among the cabinet members is clear ("we needed not to have
resigned", said the liberal social affairs minister). But worse still the
government itself does not seem to take its own resignation very
seriously: after a hung vote in parliament about the purchase of new
fighter jets, the supposedly caretaker cabinet decided to ... decide
to-day on this controversial issue on which the treasury benches
themselves were split.

And you know what: we don't have a Supreme (constitutional) Court in this 
country...


cheers, patrice & Diiiino!
('experts in everything')