The man who wants to turn an unpredictable Dutch election upside down
After thirteen years with Mark Rutte as prime minister, the Dutch will cast their votes on Wednesday in a national election that is expected to spread votes across the spectrum. But there is one man who has emerged as the main character of the campaign.
It is Pieter Omtzigt, long-time parliamentarian and founder of a new party, who says he wants to overhaul the Dutch political system from the political center – appealing to voters who are increasingly disillusioned with the establishment yet wary of extremes.
The 49-year-old Omtzigt has offered voters a new mix of left-oriented economic policies and right-oriented migration policies, packaged in a party he founded this summer called New Social Contract.
“It is a protest party in the political center,” says Tom Louwerse, a political scientist at Leiden University who has created a website that combines and summarizes opinion polls.
Yet it is one that does not pit the elite against the common man, as populist parties often do, political analysts say. While anti-establishment votes in many European countries have often gone to right-wing parties, Mr Omtzigt’s presence appears to have offered an alternative for Dutch voters who do not feel entirely at home with the far right.
The Dutch elections are developing as one of the most important and competitive in years. It will be held two years earlier than planned Rutte’s government fell in July when the parties in his coalition failed to reach an agreement on migration policy.
Mr Rutte, who is acting prime minister until a new government is formed, was considered a pillar of Dutch politics. But confidence in the leader, nicknamed the ‘Teflon Mark’, has suffered due to several scandals, including a lack of action on his part. government after earthquakes caused by decades of gas production thousands of houses were damaged in the northern province of Groningen.
Mr Rutte was also a strong voice for budgetary restraint within the European Union, especially after the British exit, which allowed the Netherlands to punch above its weight on the EU budget.
Those are big political shoes to fill, and the race remains unpredictable, analysts said, with three or four parties near the top of the polls in the homestretch.
In recent days, the far-right Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders, has increased at the expense of Mr Omtzigt’s party. The other contenders include a Green-Labor coalition on the left led by former Frans Timmermans Climate czar of the European Union; and Mr Rutte’s party, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy.
No party is expected to win an outright majority, making it likely that whoever comes out on top will have to govern in a coalition, which could take weeks or months to achieve.
Mr. Omtzigt has been somewhat coy about whether he would become prime minister, but he has emerged as the campaign’s most popular figure, said Asher van der Schelde, a researcher for I&O Research, an independent Dutch polling organization.
“He is regarded by the Dutch as a man with integrity who can bring about change,” said Van der Schelde. “The campaign is really about him.”
Although he acts as a change agent, Mr. Omtzigt is also considered a safe pair of hands. A former member of the center-right Christian party, he spent most of the past twenty years in the House of Representatives in The Hague. The familiarity could be reassuring for a relatively conservative country looking for change, but also certainty after Rutte’s long term in office.
In recent years, Mr Omtzigt has built a reputation for holding those in power accountable. He rose to prominence in 2021 after playing a pivotal role in the film exposing a systemic failure of Rutte’s government to protect thousands of families from overzealous tax inspectors.
As a result of that scandal, Rutte’s government did not resign until 2021 to be easily re-elected. According to experts, the scandal has led to growing distrust of the Dutch government.
“There is a lack of checks and balances in the Dutch political system,” Mr. Omtzigt said in a telephone interview. Among the changes he proposes is the creation of a constitutional court that would serve a role similar to the Supreme Court in the United States, ruling on whether laws comply with the Constitution.
“His style is a bit more intellectual compared to hardcore populists,” says Gerrit Voerman, professor at the University of Groningen and expert in the Dutch and European party system.
“You could say that the feeling of distrust in the government has reached the political center,” says Professor Voerman. “Criticism of the government is not specifically left or right.”
But even though he has promised “a new way of doing politics”, Mr Omtzigt himself is very much part of the establishment. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and he received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Exeter in England.
The way the government is run is not working for many people, Mr Omtzigt said. He also said many politicians were out of touch with what citizens were concerned about.
Migration is one of the most important issues in these elections. Dutch citizens across the political spectrum are in favor of limiting migration to some extent, pollsters say, including in some cases the number of migrant workers and foreign students.
But immigration is not the first issue on Dutch voters’ minds – it is the country’s housing crisis, which Mr Omtzigt has linked to an influx of migrants competing with Dutch citizens for housing.
“Everyone is talking about the rights of migrants,” Mr Omtzigt told a Dutch political podcast this month. “No one is talking about the rights to a safe existence for those 390,000 households that do not have a home in the Netherlands.”
New Social Contract says it wants a “conscious, active and selective migration policy” and proposes a maximum net migration of 50,000 people per year. (In 2022, that number – the difference between people who emigrated and immigrated – was about 224,000. according to CBS.)
“It seems that some politicians are not in line with citizens’ concerns,” Mr Omtzigt said.
The lack of clarity over whether Mr. Omtzigt wants to become prime minister or serve as leader of his party in the House of Representatives has hurt his popularity in the final days of the campaign, pollsters say. But on Sunday he told me Dutch television that he would be open to leading the country under certain circumstances.
Rutte’s successor as party leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, has criticized Mr Omtzigt for his lack of decisiveness.
“Leadership is making decisions” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in a thinly veiled criticism of Mr. Omtzigt. “If you don’t want to be prime minister, that’s fine, but just say so.”