Why did Minister Plasterk fail?

Letters to the editor 13 October 2017 Hits: 2417

Dear Editor,
A good Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations is a clever man who lets government run smoothly, working silently in the background. You can say a lot about Ronald Plasterk, but this isn’t one of those things.

You can’t even blame him that much, but the people who put him in this position.
Plasterk preferred to become Minister of Finance, but that position went to Jeroen Dijsselbloem. What remained was the Ministry of the Interior.
In the office of Minister Plasterk you’ll find the portraits of his predecessors. I was shocked when I walked there for the first time, by the number of ministers I have seen coming and going in the past few years.
I thought Thom de Graaf was the kindest and Alexander Pechtold the most vain. Johan Remkes was the funniest and Guusje ter Horst the nicest. Ernst Hirsch Ballin was the smartest and Piet Hein Donner was the meanest. Liesbeth Spies was least known of all ministers, but I think she was the best.
Ronald Plasterk is undoubtedly the worst. His low point was his performance in October 2013 at the Dutch TV-show Nieuwsuur, where he suddenly pulled out a secret letter from the NSA of the United States, which said the Netherlands was spied on. He also said exactly the opposite of apparently what was written in that secret letter. It is typical Plasterk, a politician who puts himself in unnecessary and unparalleled ways. He always had these kinds of what we call “Plasterkjes” in the Parliament.
It is not even Plasterk’s fault that he became Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations. It is mostly the mistake of Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Diederik Samsom, the then-leader of the Labour Party PvdA who made him a Minister. The wrong man in the wrong place.
And above that, he was sent on a politically impossible mission. Smaller municipalities had to join forces with other municipalities into local governments with at least 100,000 inhabitants. The provinces also had to be reformed and expanded into four parts. Not to improve local government, but as a budget cut. Each minister had failed on this part.
An even more serious fail was a budget cut of more than a third on the secret service budget which posed a threat to our national security. Together with members of other opposition parties, I took the initiative to overthrow these cuts – and enable new investments.
Plasterk had to ensure decent decentralization of the care tasks by municipalities, but had nothing to say about it. Other matters that he had control of, such as the new population register, also failed.
The Minister got into trouble because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut in the media, or by misinforming Parliament. He also made a mess of organising the Ukraine referendum. Plasterk did pass a new law on intelligence and security services in Parliament, but this led to little enthusiasm outside the Parliament. Fortunately, a referendum is held on that law.
A bad minister is not a blessing for the opposition because it also hampers you as a member of Parliament. The inimitable “Plasterkjes” can also hurt you if the minister abuses his position for political games. Or if you are dependent on the Minister to carry out your proposals. Like the House of Whistleblowers, a law that I have been fighting for almost 10 years, which was to be carried out by Plasterk. However, the House hasn’t got enough people and resources to properly investigate social misdeeds. The President of this House has resigned this week.
With the new Minister for the Interior, I want to make arrangements to solve these problems quickly. This new government agreement has less silly things than in 2012, except, of course, the intention to abolish the referendum. The law to withdraw the referendum will certainly be the subject of a referendum – that fight still has to be fought.
In the past, famous politicians have been Minister of Home Affairs, such as Ien Dales and Ed van Thijn, Hans Wiegel and Edzo Toxopeus, Pieter Cort van der Linden and Johan Rudolph Thorbecke. I hope the current coalition will take this ministry seriously again and will make sure it’s going to be a clever person who lets government run smoothly again, and who doesn’t put himself in the spotlights too much.