• The Sigrid Kaag Portrait, Mark Rutte's handbrake

Did Mark Rutte try to shake off an annoying MP?

It is the question that corners the liberal politician on April Fools' Day that is celebrated in his country, although this, far from an innocent, was one of his worst nightmares because it has put him between the ropes.

Rutte is the winner of the elections in the Netherlands two weeks ago.

He is a resigned prime minister who is a sitting government.

And

it is in a premature phase of forming its fourth consecutive government coalition

since it came to power in 2010. That is, it is still trying to make friends and test the waters to define who its future government partners could be, at least four parties. and mainly with the progressives D66.

The annoying MP in question is the Christian Democrat

Pieter Omtzigt

(CDA), who, despite being a member of a "natural partner" party of Rutte's Liberals, has always been tough on what goes wrong in the Netherlands.

This has made him a headache for recent Rutte administrations.

One of their last shows starred them as one of the spokesmen for the scandal of families accused of unsubstantiated fraud, the controversy of the tax agency that led Rutte to announce in January the resignation of his entire government en bloc to assume responsibilities.

An Executive was loaded in which his own party was a partner in the government, occupying positions such as the Minister of Finance.

"I have been working with him since 2003. We have clashed many times, but fortunately we always know where to meet," Rutte defended, when all fingers pointed at him for allegedly leading what was seen as a plot to get Omtzigt out of The Hague. and steer him away from any position that would allow him to criticize the future Dutch executive, including

giving him a ministerial position

in the future government that Rutte plans to lead, if an agreement is reached with CDA and D66.

From within, Omtzigt will not criticize his own boss, some analysts believe.

But this episode of Rutte's political career has little to envy a soap opera.

Some deputies who had not been in office for 24 hours because they had just assumed a position face en masse a sitting prime minister who is trying to save his skin as leader of the liberals.

Meanwhile, all the other political leaders, including those who appeared to be his partners, turned their backs on him in a newly formed Parliament after the March 17 elections, in which Rutte triumphed as leader of the Liberals (VVD) and in what was seen as a referendum on his management of the pandemic.

This entanglement began on March 25, in full "explorations" of government possibilities.

One of the negotiators, the progressive

Kajsa Ollongren

(D66), hurried out of the parliamentary building before a meeting she was to have with Rutte and Sigrid Kaag, the leader of the progressives.

He had just been informed that he had tested positive for coronavirus and had to undergo quarantine.

Upon his departure, there were the usual congressional photographers and his driver, who, by the way, did not know that his boss could have the coronavirus, and only found out when they were already on the way, so he could have infected him.

Before getting into the car, Ollongren laid out a piece of paper where you could read some annotations made during the meetings he had held with different political leaders in those days, and in one of the sentences he said something about "placing Omtzigt" in another part.

It was not clear what that meant, but at the stage of the talks, it was still not possible to talk about positions with names and surnames, much less a controversial and critical deputy like Omtzigt.

The controversy was such that

Ollongren and his colleague, the liberal Annemarie Jorritsma (VVD), resigned

as "explorers" because their credibility was in doubt.

On the same day, they both denied that this Christian Democrat deputy had been the subject of debate during the talks, and Dutch television did not ask Rutte if it was he who brought it up, but he flatly denied having ever brought up his name.

But that did not convince the parliamentary majority, who demanded to know all the content of the annotations made during the meetings to debate them this week, when the new deputies have already taken office.

An oblivion "idiot"

And so it was: this Thursday they received the reports, coming to light that not only was Omtzigt talked about in those exploratory meetings, but it was Rutte himself who had mentioned that, for example, he should be given a position as minister in the future coalition.

This brought to the table theories that the Liberals wanted an annoying MP away from The Hague, or within the government so that they cannot criticize him from the outside.

One of Omtzigt's last ideas was to present before Parliament a motion approved by a majority to request external scrutiny by the Venice Commission, an advisory body to the Council of Europe, on the respect and

situation of the rule of law in the Netherlands

, as well as the functioning of the legislative, executive and judicial powers.

But despite all this, Rutte insisted on Thursday that he does not want to get rid of it, that he did not remember having mentioned Omtzigt, nor did the explorers.

"Seriously, I have no reason to lie, it is simply not true," Rutte said, justifying that he had not lied conscientiously to the press and Parliament.

He had "misremembered" what he had said in the meetings.

It was an "idiotic" forgetfulness and he is not "someone who cheats on his colleagues," he said, addressing his partners in the outgoing coalition (CDA, D66 and Christian Union).

"How could there have been such collective amnesia?" Asked the leader of the green left,

Jesse Klaver

.

"Every time you get in trouble, your memory fails you," he added, listing scandals in which Rutte used the excuse of forgetting.

The far-right Geert Wilders is not convinced by this story.

He believes that Rutte's political career is over and he should resign.

He filed a motion of no confidence to make it clear, according to him, that the liberal had

lost the confidence of the parliamentary majority

.

But they will still have to vote for it.

In any case, losing the vote of no confidence does not have great effects on a prime minister who is already ruling in office, although it will have on the leader of the VVD, a party that would then have to decide if it wants to keep Rutte in front or if it believes that he has already lost the confidence to negotiate a new coalition.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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