Geert Wilders, a leader who is against Islam, has won the Dutch general election by a large margin.
After being in parliament for 25 years, his party (PVV) is going to win 37 seats, which is more than the left-wing alliance.
“The PVV is too important to ignore,” he said. We will lead.
His victory has surprised the government in the Netherlands and it will also surprise other countries in Europe.
However, to keep his promise to be a leader for all people, he will need to convince other political parties to work together with him. He wants to win 76 seats out of the 150 seats in parliament.
In his winning speech, he was ready to fight and said, “We want to lead and. ” we will be in charge. Receiving the seat numbers is a big honor, but it also comes with a big responsibility.
Before people voted, the three other major parties said they would not join a government led by Wilders because they do not agree with his extreme right-wing ideas. But things could be different because he won by a lot.
The group led by Frans Timmermans, who used to work for the EU, got 25 seats in the election, which means they came in second place. This is based on a forecast from 94% of the votes.
He said he didn’t want to be in a government led by Wilders and promised to protect the way the country is run and the laws that govern it. “We will not allow anyone to enter the Netherlands. ” In the Netherlands, everyone is treated the same,” he said to his followers.
This means the VVD party is in third place with a new leader, Dilan Yesilgöz, and a new party made by MP Pieter Omtzigt is in fourth place.
Before the election, she said she wouldn’t be in charge of a government led by Wilders, but she didn’t say she wouldn’t work with him if she won.
Mr Omtzigt originally said his New Social Contract party wouldn’t work with Mr Wilders, but now he says they are willing to take the trust of voters and put it into action.
Wilders winning would surprise Europe because the Netherlands helped create the European Union.
Nationalist and people on the far-right in Europe said they liked what he did. In France, Marine Le Pen, who leads the National Rally, said that this shows that more people are feeling strongly about defending national identities.
Mr Wilders wants to have a vote to leave the EU, which he calls a “Nexit”, even though he knows most people in the country don’t want to leave. It will be difficult for him to convince any important potential partner to agree to that.
He toned down his strong words against Islam before the vote. He said there were other important issues right now and that he was willing to set aside his plans to ban mosques and Islamic schools.
The plan worked well and increased the PVV party’s numbers in parliament by more than twice.
During the campaign, Mr. Wilders used people’s unhappiness with the old government, which fell apart because of a disagreement about asylum rules.
Political scientist Martin Rosema from the University of Twente said that it was one of many advantages that had been given to Mr Wilders in a short period of time. Another thing was that the leader from the center-right who believes in freedom and open markets, said that he is open to working together with him in a partnership.
“He said that we have seen in other countries that extreme right-wing parties do not do well when they are not included. ”
Migration is a big topic, and Mr. Wilders said on Wednesday he wants to deal with a large number of people seeking asylum and coming to live in the country.
Last year, more than 220,000 people moved to the Netherlands, and the number more than doubled. Some of the people moved because they were running away from Russia’s attack on Ukraine. But the problem got worse because there are not enough homes – about 390,000 homes are missing.
At Yesilgöz’s VVD headquarters in The Hague, her supporters were getting ready to celebrate the possibility of having the first female prime minister in the Netherlands.
However, everyone was shocked when the exit polls were shown on the screens, and they gathered around their phones trying to figure out what went wrong.
Ms Yesilgöz became the leader of the centre-right party after the country’s prime minister, Mark Rutte, left politics in July. She moved to the Netherlands when she was seven years old because she had to leave Turkey. Now, she is very strict about letting people into the country.
Some politicians and Muslim leaders say she is allowing the far-right to become more powerful by not saying she won’t work with Geert Wilders.
Ms Yesilgöz, who is 46 years old, tried to separate herself from the Rutte government where she worked as justice minister. However, she was not able to meet the expectations of the people.
Just before the election, almost half of the voters were undecided on who to vote for. Many people may have chosen not to support her.
One Muslim voter in The Hague said that if Mr Wilders wasn’t so against Muslims, they would be interested in him. This shows that some voters are not in favor of Mr Wilders’ views on Muslims.
Before the vote, Mr. Wilders felt confident about his chances and told the BBC. “I believe this is the first time ever in Holland that we have gained 10 seats in the polls in just one week. ”
He knew it would be hard to form a government, but he believed in being positive and winning would make it hard for other parties to ignore him.