Word: fortuyn
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee told Parliament last Friday that the "massacre of innocents" meant that India would "have to retaliate." A day later, New Delhi expelled the Pakistani High Commissioner. Since December, the two countries have mobilized some 1 million troops along the border. THE NETHERLANDS Wheel of Fortuyn After an election campaign overshadowed by the assassination of anti-immigrant populist Pim Fortuyn, Dutch voters roundly rejected all three parties in Prime Minister Wim Kok's outgoing center-left coalition. The winners were the opposition Christian Democrats, who set about exploring coalition possibilities with the party Fortuyn founded...
...same time, Fortuyn's movement profits from an electorate fed up with the sense of stasis in the outgoing left-right coalition. Prime Minister Kok, who is not running for re-election, was taunted by bystanders at Fortuyn's funeral on Friday and chose to leave the cathedral by a back door. "The politicians are always compromising, never solving anything," says Peter Ver A, 42, who owns a Rotterdam "coffee shop" where customers can smoke hashish and marijuana. "The usual politicians just didn't see the problem of crime. People want everybody to follow the rules." Dutch rules, that...
Without its founder, Fortuyn's List could quickly turn out to manifest many of the foibles of other political parties. Fortuyn still heads it, but beneath his now hallowed name a struggle for power is likely. No. 2 on the list, Joao Varela, whose parents immigrated from Cape Verde, is considered too young at 27 to lead the party in parliament. Winny de Jong, 43, a consumer advocate for a Dutch supermarket trade association, has the support of many party leaders, but others seem ready to back Mat Herben, 49, a journalist who, as he says, "wrote Pim's speeches...
Whatever their success, Fortuyn's survivors will almost certainly have to face a fundamental fact of Dutch politics: governments are coalitions formed by consensus, not confrontation. And they will face the new and difficult task, as one leading government politician puts it, "of solving problems, not just pointing them...
established parties are chastened by Fortuyn's signal success and vow to draw lessons. Says Dick Benschop, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs from Kok's Labor Party: "We'll see less focus on technocratic control and more on political debate." But they lack the personalities to slake the newly awakened Dutch thirst for flamboyance, verve and straight talking that is Pim Fortuyn's best legacy. Pragmatism demands patience, and Dutch voters seem to be running short on that...