Dutch head to polls amid tense immigration policy debate

Overall, some 13 million people are eligible to vote and 28 parties are competing for the 150 seats in the Dutch lower house of parliament.

The Dutch voted in parliamentary elections Wednesday that are being closely watched for indications of the strength of far-right populism ahead of national elections in France and Germany later this year.

On the eve of Dutch elections, Geert Wilders has branded people who rioted during a protest outside Rotterdam’s Turkish consulate “scum”.

Wealthy American conservatives have poured large sums into the electoral campaign of far-right leader Geert Wilders of the Netherlands’ Dutch Freedom Party, in support of his anti-Islam, anti-EU views.

Following the vote in the Netherlands, the French go to the polls next month with far-right candidate Marine Le Pen now in second place behind centrist Emmanuel Macron.

Wilders has questioned whether the other parties will lock him out if his party takes the most seats, saying such an outcome would be “an insult” to voters and lead to government instability.

Sybrand Buma’s Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) is all but certain to participate in the next governing coalition, regardless of who wins, and Buma even has a long-shot chance of becoming prime minister after Wednesday’s vote, given other parties’ refusal to work with Wilders.

Since all other major parties have excluded the PVV as a coalition partner due to the party’s hostile attitude towards the European Union and immigrants, the “most important elections in Dutch history” will nearly certainly result in another boring, centrist coalition government.

The PVV would not necessarily be part of the next government however, because that will likely be a coalition and most parties have pledged not to govern with the PVV.

In an interview published on Monday with the largest daily newspaper, De Telegraaf, Wilders said he did not need to explain the details of his plans, because Dutch voters “know exactly what we want”. Mr Wilders slipped behind in the final week of February.

Mr Wilders’ Freedom Party won 15 seats in 2012, down from 24 in the previous election. 50Plus leader Henk Krol, expected to win 10 seats, wrote in an opinion piece that Freedom Party voters shouldn’t be excluded beforehand, because “everyone will understand what impression that will leave and how the Freedom Party can grow stronger from this”.

“And they [other political parties] have just let him get away with it”.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Tuesday there should be an apology from the Netherlands regarding the recent ban on Turkish ministers’ rallies in the country, APA reports quoting AA.

These are the kind of voters who were crucial to Leave’s victory in the European Union referendum, so it will be interesting to see whether their concerns about unemployment and their pessimism about corruption in the Netherlands translate into greater support for populist parties, including the Freedom Party.

Rhetoric between Turkey and the Netherlands has become heated, with Erdoğan going so far as to call the Dutch “Nazi remnants”.

Some Wilders’ supporters, interviewed at a campaign event say it is unfair that other political parties will not even agree to preliminary discussions.

Mr Rutte and Mr Wilders faced one another in an eagerly awaited TV debate for the first time on Monday evening, but although the confrontation was lively and at times verging on bad-tempered, both men stuck to well-worn campaign themes and neither delivered a fatal blow.