The PVV: Heading for Victory in Almere

The Dutch government has fallen, and new elections have been scheduled: first in line are next Wednesday’s local municipal elections, followed by elections for the national parliament in June.

In the March 3 elections, Geert Wilders’ party has fielded candidates in only two municipalities, Almere and the Hague. However, the PVV is projected to do extremely well in both places. Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article about the latest opinion polls in Almere, and then Geert Wilders’ speech from his appearance in that city.

Mr. Wilders’ speech is excellent, and I highly recommend it. Not only does he stick it to the Socialists and ridicule their use of Arabic-language election posters, he dares to speak the forbidden words about Islam, calling for “an immediate ban on headscarves, get rid of that woman-humiliating Islamic symbol. And for all clarity: this is not however meant for crosses or yarmulkes, because those are symbols of religions that belong to our own culture and are not — as is the case with headscarves — a sign of an oppressive totalitarian ideology.”

This sets him apart from the French laicists, for example, who have banned all religious expressions. Mr. Wilders identifies traditional Christian and Jewish religious symbols as bastions that support and maintain Dutch culture.

First, from De Telegraaf:

Poll: PVV wins big in Almere

In the municipal elections in Almere, the Party for Freedom (PVV) may become by far the largest party. TNS NIPO predicts this result from a poll commissioned by newspaper De Volkskrant and the University of Amsterdam.

In the poll, which was conducted just before the fall of the Balkenende Cabinet, the PVV receives 30 percent of the votes. The PvdA follows with 20 percent as the second party.

According to the survey, older indigenous men who stayed home in the last election are the main source of new voters for the PVV. The potential PVV voters want to protest against the government’s policy, and are thus are highly motivated to vote.

The text of Geert Wilders’ speech, from the PVV website:

Speech Geert Wilders at the PVV evening in Almere

Dear People,

First, a general notice. If people from the PvdA (Socialists) are present tonight: here is a message for you. At the end of the speech, I will hand out the speech in Arabic so that you can understand what I have said.^[1]

For a long time the PvdA has not spoken the language of the common man or woman. The party of Wouter Bos speaks Arabic. By now you will certainly have read about the PvdA election pamphlet being distributed in Arabic. But do you also know what it says? Have you been able to read it? Probably not. Well, I have tried to translate it for you, and is says something like: “Me Jeltje van Nieuwenhoven, you get nice benefits, you like-um, we Hollandie pay everything nice.”

In other words: bring over your whole family, because money grows on trees here. The PvdA takes good care of its voting-cattle.

Ladies and gentlemen, how great it is to be here in Almere [map], how great it is to be in the new land [land reclaimed (map) in the 1950s-60s]. This evening, of course, it is about the elections next Wednesday in the city of Almere. I will say a few things about that later on — also about the superb work of our party leader Raymond de Roon and his fantastic team in this beautiful city. But I also want to share a few other things with you. Maybe you have heard that the Cabinet fell recently.

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There was a Cabinet of monseigneur Balkenende [CDA, Christian Democrat] and monseigneur Bos [PvdA, Socialist]. Its motto was “live together, work together”. But even that did not work, for they could not work very well together. Thus it became “fighting together”. And after three years, the motto became “calling a new election together”. It appeared that this was not a government of co-operation, but a cabinet of runaways. Just when the economic problems in our country were at their worst, they took to their heels.

I do not know how you see it, but a government that indeed does not govern may leave right away. Balkenende-Bos has achieved nothing good past three years. Even their own primary task — making sure you must continue working until you are 67 — is still uncompleted. I was not sorry about the fall of the Cabinet. Even better: it was the best news of the year. My first reaction was: hoist tfhe flags! This was the cabinet of higher taxes and higher bankers’ bonuses, a higher age for state pensions and higher crime in the Netherlands. What this government especially excelled in was the increase of mass immigration, supporting the Islamization of our country and eroding the Dutch character of the Netherlands. In short, everything we already did not lack.

This government was not going to rest until on every street corner in the Netherlands there was a minaret and across the road a distribution office for social services. And I must admit they did their best. Balkenende-Bos has kept its promises. Never before has the influx of immigrants been so large, and never before have so many immigrants been admitted. This government was breaking record after record. If mass immigration had been an Olympic sport, Balkenende would have been more successful than Sven Kramer, Mark Tuitert, and Ireen Wust put together.

Now we will have elections. The other parties are all warming up. You might think: to take on the problems of the Netherlands. But, well, no: all they want to take on is the Party for Freedom. State Secretary Timmermans of the PvdA has blatantly called for all parties to agree on the exclusion of the PVV. So a common front against us. A cordon sanitaire.

And see here, that is how we recognize the PvdA once again. The PvdA still thinks it is a large party that runs the Netherlands. An arrogant club, all full of themselves. They enter the elections with the slogan: “everyone counts”. But they are happy to make an exception for the electorate of the PVV. Those people do not count. You are irrelevant. I think there is only one remedy for Mr. Timmermans. And that is a resounding election result for the PVV. First on March 3 [municipal elections] and then on June 9 for Parliament. Together we will take the PvdA down a peg or two.

This would teach Wouter Bos a good lesson. He constantly keeps proclaiming that “Islam belongs in the Netherlands”. When we do well in the elections, when we win the elections, he might well one day be proclaiming “the PVV belongs in the Netherlands”.

The Socialist Party [SP] is also in a big mess. Poor Agnes [Agnes Kant, fraction leader SP]. She wants so much, but is allowed so little by her chairman Jan [Marijnissen, co-founder and former fraction leader]. Every day they have a meal together, and then Agnes writes down in her notebook what Jan instructs her to do this time. And then that is what she does.

But last Tuesday it went all wrong. Little Agnes said something without Daddy Jan putting a spin on it. Agnes Kant said: “No, not excluding the PVV”, and a little later Jan on the radio said just the opposite. He would “never” get along with us. And once again that makes clear how it works in the SP. Jan Marijnissen is the boss, and Agnes Kant may only do the dishes.

The Party for Freedom has a breakpoint for negotiations for a Cabinet. We say: it is good to talk with us. We are here for the Netherlands, we are here for the people, therefore we will be pleased to take on our responsibility as a coalition party. The PVV is ready for that. But to form a coalition with the PVV, you can be assured of one thing: the threshold age for the AOW will remain at 65 years. The legacy of Willem Drees [PM who in the 1950s installed the AOW (then tax-neutral) and canceled his PvdA membership early in the 1970s due to irresponsible left-wing policies] is in good hands with the Party for Freedom!

People, you know the PVV to be a caring party^[2]. We see that the backbone of the Netherlands is formed by the teacher, the nurse, and the policeman. All people who ensure that the Netherlands will be able to keep going. People who are entitled to a decent old age. People who are entitled to an AOW when they are 65.

Then to Almere, to this beautiful city. Dear people, there is something in the air. Take a deep breath. You can smell it. It is the smell of victory!

Here in Almere, the Freedom Party puts forward one of its heaviest guns. Our justice spokesman in Parliament: Raymond de Roon.

Raymond is one of the gifts we received in 2006. One day someone from high at the top of the Public Ministry knocked at the door. Someone who every day could see around him what was happening on the street. Someone who held office in the heart of Amsterdam and knew like no one else how the city suffered from crime. After the elections, Raymond emerged to become the crime fighter in Parliament. He pleaded for longer sentences, for minimum sentences, for a tough approach to offenders, and less coziness and comfort in the prisons.

Raymond de Roon and his team have set the stakes high. They say: Almere must become the safest city in the Netherlands. The choices the PVV makes here in Almere are therefore crystal-clear. More police on the streets and additional security through new urban commandos, lower subsidies and fewer civil servants in the town hall, and the use of those salaries for more security, a tougher approach to criminal scum, mostly Moroccan and Antillean street terrorists; force the pig-headed nuisance to move to container houses outside the fringe of the city, outside the residential areas; more CCTV and more police out on the street. The police must get away from their the desks and computers and hop out onto the street.

This is a very different story from the PvdA. Look here [in Almere] at what this PvdA-VVD municipal government wants to spend your money on. All weird multicultural subsidies. Turkish needle-work, Moroccan hopscotch, Anatolian netball, Arabian finger-painting — out of sheer silliness they don’t know what to spend your money on. Almere, for instance has its own “Day of Dialogue”, I did not know what I heard here. For thousands of years, people, if willing to, just started a conversation. For example while having a cup of coffee together. But in the city of Annemarie Jorritsma [Mayor of Almere] that is done in an entirely different way. There the subsidy tap is opened, and people are going to have a talk together under supervision of the municipality.

For the PvdA, that is the essence of their policies. As long as they can serve their voting-cattle. As long as they can give away gifts to people who still vote left-wing.

In recent months, Raymond de Roon has been meeting with quite a lot of people in this city. And those citizens over and over told our candidates: provide lower taxes for us; bring down those burdens! What they earn themselves, they also want to keep themselves. And thus the PVV is also setting to work on that right here in Almere: lowering the property tax, cutting the parking fees in half, and throwing out the sewage and waste disposal tax.

The Party for Freedom has been pursuing a marvelous campaign in recent weeks. Raymond and his team, for instance, paid a visit last week to the C1000 supermarket in Almere Harbor, which was recently raided, and some staff even had a gun put to their heads. No wonder some of the victims still are deeply impressed long afterwards. A great idea to pay them a visit. It is good that representatives inform themselves of what lack of safety means to ordinary people. Look, that is true PVV policy. Not counting policy reports, but helping citizens.

I have been told that Mayor Jorritsma here goes by the nickname “Mrs. Incident”. Any violent crime, every raid, she waves away as being an “incident”. But it is time we again look to the victims of violence and nuisance and focus on them. Raymond and his team do that, and therefore the PVV in this beautiful city will look forward to a wonderful future.

And I still have other good news for you. I heard from our party leaders in Almere and the Hague [the other city where the PVV joins the municipal elections], Raymond de Roon and Sietse Fritsma, what the main effort will be for the [coalition] negotiations in Almere and the Hague after March 3 [the municipal elections]: That will be a ban on headscarves in municipal bodies and all other institutions, foundations, or associations, if they receive even one penny of subsidy from the municipality. Thus an immediate ban on headscarves, get rid of that woman-humiliating Islamic symbol. And for all clarity: this is not however meant for crosses or yarmulkes, because those are symbols of religions that belong to our own culture and are not — as is the case with headscarves — a sign of an oppressive totalitarian ideology.

Dear people, we here in Almere will go against the flow for a great result on Wednesday. I am convinced that not only in the Netherlands, but also in Europe, many will be watching the PVV. You can make the difference. You can let this be known to the entire Netherlands on Wednesday: Almere chooses the PVV. Almere chooses for the future.

And you then will also do something else. With a resounding victory, you will lay the basis for the success of the PVV in the general election — when on June 9 hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of people throughout the Netherlands will vote for the Party for Freedom.

Together we will make sure that a new voice will be heard in the Hague and Almere and in the rest of the country: Out with the political elite: it is time for the PVV!

Thank you very much!

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Notes:

[1]		The speech for Socialists in Arabic.
[2]		A caring party: In Dutch it says “sociaal”, but has the meaning of “caring”, not “Socialist”.