Posted on 05/08/2002 10:39:55 PM PDT by Timesink
AS if Pim Fortuyn had not done enough already to turn Dutch politics upside down, the standard bearer of his anti-immigration movement is now a black cosmetics executive from the Cape Verde isles.
Joao Varela, 27, is the new number one candidate on the Pim Fortuyn List. Under Holland's parliamentary tradition, Queen Beatrix may be required to invite him to form the next government should the party emerge as the biggest grouping in the elections next Wednesday.
Polls taken just before Mr Fortuyn's murder on Monday gave the party 17 per cent, narrowly behind the ruling Labour Party and the opposition Christian Democrats. Few dare to predict how it will perform without its firebrand leader, who eclipsed the other 51 names on the List.
The property tycoon who bankrolled the movement, Harry Mens, has already called the List an "incompetent" assortment of amateurs who do not deserve a vote. Without Mr Fortuyn, the party was meaningless, he said, declaring that he would now switch to the Christian Democrats.
The List was cobbled together in days after Mr Fortuyn's local group, Livable Rotterdam, swept the city elections in March. Faced with a deadline for registering candidates nationwide, he interviewed hundreds of volunteers at breakneck speed. Vetting lasted about five minutes.
Mr Varela has no political experience. He was talked into running by Mr Fortuyn, whom he described as "a sort of father, an inspiration, the man who made me what I am". He has made it clear that he does not want to be a full-time politician.
His life story is a remarkable tale of immigrant success. Son of a poor "guest worker", he arrived in Rotterdam as a child. By the age of eight he had run away from home, apparently a living hell. He was brought up in an orphanage, and then by foster parents, before making it to Rotterdam's Erasmus University to study economics.
He is a staunch Catholic, reflecting the rift between Christian and Muslim immigrants in Rotterdam, and stoutly defends Mr Fortuyn's infamous remark that Islam is a "backward" religion that oppresses women, persecutes homosexuals and never went through the "civilising laundromat" of the Enlightenment. "His comments have been misunderstood. The nuances were lost. He was referring to Islam as a state system, and in that respect I agree totally," Mr Varela told the Rotterdam Handelsblatt.
He was to be in charge of immigration policy if the party did well enough to join a coalition government, implementing the Fortuyn plan of closing the frontiers to new arrivals from the Third World and spending resources instead on making those already in the country more Dutch. "I want to motivate the immigrants, push them, make them capable of fending for themselves," he said.
It clearly never occurred to Mr Varela that he could be first in line for the post of prime minister. The decision on who should lead the party has been postponed until after the election, but party sources said it was likely somebody "more experienced" would be chosen.
Professor Paul Cliteur, a political commentator, said the Fortuyn List was packed with good candidates who would almost certainly win a big sympathy vote. "The cynicism about the List is not justified. It's full of people who have made their mark," he said.
Number three on the list is Jim Janssen van Raay, 69, who served as a Euro-MP for the Christian Democrats for 18 years. Number five is Ferry Hoogendijk, 68, who used to edit Elsevier, Holland's leading conservative magazine.
Both say someone younger should take the lead, pointing to Winnie de Jong, a consumer activist, as the sort of fresh face needed to keep the Fortuyn spirit alive. But Mr Varela would be the most intriguing, allowing Holland to judge whether Mr Fortuyn's appeal was - as the Left claims - little more than racism in high-camp garb.
I guess this man was born in a Dutch colony, emigrated to Holland. He would therefore be a Dutch citizen.
I doubt Fortuyn was racist, at all. It is good to hear this fellow make the same, sane, comments about Islam. As the news runs, day by day, people around the world are being given a taste of "peaceful, tolerant Islam." It seems they want less, and less, of it.
How do you figure? He was for drastic reductions on taxes. Reform of the health care system, with the market coming into play to prod the bureacrats to reform, halting the Netherlands sliding into the EU never never land, building more prisons and police reform in order to crack down on criminals. That's just a few off the top of my head.
The bottom line is that many decent honest people oppose immigration. Furthermore, the racists also find a home and common ground with these honest people. I suspect the leaders of the neo nazi party are anti immigration. It is sometimes hard to tell who are the racists and who are not.
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