THE Dutch have just brought an anti-Islam party to power, anti-immigration and anti-European Union, the Freedom Party. With its 24% of votes, this party won 37 of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament.
The leader of the Freedom Party will be forced to govern with the help of other parties to obtain the required majority of 76 votes in parliament. However, the other two main parties, with 25 and 24 MPs respectively, view favorably the possibility of entering into a coalition with him. However, they do not want their deputies to enter the cabinet.
The Dutch election results are part of a very right-wing wave sweeping across Europe. Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and now the Netherlands all have leaders who are extremely critical of the European Union and immigration policies.
However, compared to North American economic policies, these leaders are rather centrist.
Lack of proportionality
The Dutch political system, like many other political systems, is afflicted with a proportional voting system. Given this system, around fifteen political parties obtained at least one seat in parliament.
This proportional system does not allow the constitution of majority governments. This is a great weakness in times of crisis, since these minority governments are forced to take into account a plethora of contradictory interests which end up paralyzing their action and favoring half-measures.
Worse, as the election results in the Netherlands show, this voting method favors extremist parties over time.
Problem of religion
The spread of Islam in several Western countries poses an increasingly acute problem for two reasons.
The first is that Western societies developed in part thanks to their emancipation from religions, particularly the Christian religion. However, their new immigrants are very religious, especially those who come from Muslim countries.
The second is that modern Islam has been captured by theocratic countries: Saudi Arabia for the Sunnis and Iran for the Shiites. The religious leaders of these two countries are obscurantist. They have caused Islam to regress towards medieval interpretations rather than trying to modernize it. These fundamentalist interpretations favor the creation or maintenance of authoritarian, or even totalitarian, governments.
Religious fundamentalism is not unique to Islam. Evangelicals in the United States make up almost 30% of voters. They have invested in the Republican Party and are trying to shape American politics according to their beliefs. In the United States, these religious fundamentalists support the authoritarian drift of Donald Trump’s supporters.
In addition to the proportional voting system, it is also the refusal of most other Dutch parties to consider that religion interferes in the politics of democracies which is at the origin of the electoral success of the Freedom Party.
Unfortunately, many leaders are afraid to address these issues.