Inverted justice

The blogosphere has been pretty good covering the sentencing of Fortuyn's killer, who was condemned to a ridiculous 12-year sentence. Now the appeals are beginning to roll in both from the prosecutors as well as from the defense. There was a big outcry in the Netherlands over the light sentence handed out to Volkert van der Graaf, which even led to one of the judges receiving a bullet in the mail. The Dutch judiciary has never been known for handing out particularly tough sentences, as evidenced in recent cases. Moreover, the authorities are all but capitulating to criminals.

The appeal by the defense in this case is a real tear-jerker. The defense attorneys argue that the judges did not take into account the "harsh conditions" under which murderer van der Graaf had been kept initially. Moreover, they say, they disregarded the statements made by several politicians about murderer van der Graaf. Poor baby.

Meanwhile in the inverted world of Dutch justice, a jeweler is faced with a demand for a two-year prison sentence because he shot and killed one burglar, and wounded another. The public prosecutor claims it's a case of manslaughter, as the jeweler refused to help the scum who were trying to rob him after shooting them. And he also kicked one of them (hard, they add) in the head. And to make matters completely unbearable, the gun he committed his crime with was of course illegal.

It's outrageous that law-abiding citizens face jail time for protecting their property. If more burglars were faced with the threat of having their brains blown out, they might decide to take up a less risky profession. The only silver lining is that even if the jeweler is convicted to the full two years, he won't have to spend very long in prison. But every day that he does is an outrage in itself. Meanwhile real criminals, like Pim Fortuyn's murderer, are treated with preposterous lenience.

Mickey Kaus (no permalinks?) pointed out the following:

Among the lessons the twentieth century teaches us, one is surely that assassinations work -- maybe not in the long-term (centuries), but in the medium term (decades). You're not supposed to say this. It's a bit like admitting that most great popular music is made on drugs. But Oswald, Sirhan, Ray, Amir, van der Graaf -- name five other men who have done more to alter the course of history (for better or, in this case, worse) in their lifetimes. You'd think the Dutch judges would recognize this and adjust the punitive calculus accordingly. Instead, they've made an offer many ineffectual-yet-earnest activists may find hard to refuse.

This is exactly the point. If you do want to commit murder, do it in the Netherlands. If the reason is important enough for you, then spending 12 years in prison may not be such a bad deal. And if you can convince psychiatrists that you're actually nuts, you can get off even more easily. It's a ridiculous and dangerous position for a country to be in, but somehow I suspect it's not going to improve any time soon.

Listening to Pim

A big furore burst forth in the Netherlands recently, when allegations surfaced that the Dutch secret service, the AIVD, had placed phone taps on murdered politician Pim Fortuyn. This was vehemently denied by Klaas de Vries, who was secretary of the Interior at the time and who would have had to give his permission for any taps. However, it now seems that he could be lying and the AIVD could be lying, and it's all perfectly legal. Apparently the AIVD and the secretary are allowed to keep the commission investigating the murder of Pim Fortuyn in the dark, if the information is categorized as a "state secret." So the AIVD can tap and observe people, and there is no way for the public ever to know if they consider it a state secret.

It is somewhat scary that nobody seems to exert any oversight at all over the doings of the AIVD. I understand that secrecy is necessary in some cases to protect the security of the state (much as I hate to admit it), but the fact that nobody is in a position to exert any oversight is worrying. I am not quite sure how to solve this dilemma. On the other hand, in cases such as the investigation into the security of Pim Fortuyn, where past actions of the secret service are at issue, more transparant access to the doings of the secret service must be possible, and should be made possible by law. It's preposterous to have a situation where even in retrospect, the actions of the secret service cannot will not be divulged. That's just an invitation for abuse.

The fall of the Dutch government

Now here is a perfect example of how to make complete fools of yourselves and miss an historic opportunity while doing so. That, in a nutshell is the story of the LPF, the List Pim Fortuyn. It had been spiraling into self-destruction for a while now, and before leaving for London I was thinking to myself that I should blog about it, but I never had the time. So barely after I get back (including a canceled flight from London City airport) the government finally falls. The immediate cause: two of the LPF ministers hated each other's guts and would not longer even talk to one another.

There's more background on the whole thing at the Visser View, and as he rightly points out, a complete chronology of the farce that the LPF had become would be impossible to blog, even on an increasingly verbose blog such as this. Still, here are some of the highlights. I never thought the LPF would last very long, as it was founded in a hurry following Pim Fortuyn's disagreements with his erstwhile political home, the party Leefbaar Nederland. Carrying his name, the party was mostly a vehicle for his ambitions and highly dependent on his. So after he was murdered, the LPF would sooner or later have had to come to terms with its post-Pim direction. But the haste of forming the party, and its huge electoral success, meant that the people representing it in parliament were completely untested and in many cases unvetted. This opened the door to a lot of, shall we say, colorful personalities to enter parliament on behalf of the LPF.

Once in a coalition government with the Christian Democrats (CDA) and somewhat-free-market Liberals (VVD), the LPF quickly started to tear itself apart on many levels. The parliamentary party sent its chairman, Matt Herben, packing after only a brief time at the helm. The ministers in government showed their inexperience. None of this would have been fatal, were it not for the ever increasing level of internecine warfare within the LPF. The members of parliament were at each other's throats pretty much continuously in the last few weeks. Splits and defections popped up regularly, and were sometimes mended. However, it became ever harder to take the LPF seriously.

What surprises me most is that the people in the LPF did not seem to have any instinct for self-preservation. Forget national interest. Forget responsibility. The LPF did not even seem to have an urge to prolong its own existence. Everybody could see the crash coming if they continued like this, and the opinion polls were looking ever more bleak. Precipitating the fall of the government meant for all LPFers the loss of their seats in parliament. It's amazing that this simple threat of political extinction did not impose more discipline on them. Instead, the egos of the parliamentarians asserted themselves, and if that meant sinking the party or the government, so be it. Still, the blindness is amazing. They should have known, as the rest of the country did, that their ego-trips would render them irrelevant after any new election.

And new elections are on the way. There is little hope of glueing the pieces back together again after all that has happened. The CDA and VVD quite rightly pulled the plug on this ongoing nonsense, and the LPF faces electoral oblivion. I don't think they're going to get any seats in parliament at all, and that is a big shame. The LPF, even without Pim Fortuyn, had the opportunity to reshape Dutch politics, and to inject much-needed new thinking into the political debate. There were instances where the influence of the LPF was refreshing in the new government, but they were completely overshadowed by the internal rivalries. And heirs of Pim Fortuyn's heritage squandered a big opportunity to shake things up.

The ossified political culture of the Netherlands was certainly the richer for Pim Fortuyn's cheerful, thoughtful and occasionally outrageous iconoclasm. What we got in the LPF was a stone-throwing mob without direction or purpose. Some of the LPF ministers would have done really well, but were never given the chance. So what's going to happen next? The elections are probably going to be held in December, and the LPF will be wiped out. Part of the former LPF voters seems to be shifting to the CDA, which is rather ironic as the CDA is the ultimate Respectable Establishment party. In terms of program, the LPF had more in common with the VVD, which also seems to be benefitting in the polls. But that still does not account for all the LPF's seats. It appears a large part of the LPF voters won't bother to show up to vote, leading to a scaling up of other parties' seats. The disenchanted part of the electorate which Pim Fortuyn managed to mobilized is going to withdraw out of politics again, which could lead to problems down the road.

At the heart of Fortuyn's program were several long-neglected but highly relevant issues. Not just the formerly-taboo issue of immigration, but the wider functioning of society such as transport policy, declining standards in health care and education and the increasing crime rate were all resonating with voters. The big danger now is that once the those arriviste troublemakers of the LPF are gone, the old established parties can return to their politics as usual. This is only storing up trouble for the future. In that sense, Pim Fortuyn's legacy will remain relevant to an extent, as the VVD and CDA won't entirely ignore the issues. But the big impetus, and above all, the impetus to look anew and think anew without the shackles of politics past will be gone.

In the shorter term, there are other problems too. The economy is stalling, and additional uncertainty about what a new government will be like, and what it will do is not going to help. Moreover, the European Union is due to decide on the expansion to the east, and this had become a bone of contention in the government too with the VVD taking a hard line on Polish entry. Scuppering EU expansion could be the biggest international fallout of the fall of the Dutch government.

But what's blogging without a prediction? The VVD and CDA will form the next government. Back to politics as usual after some lip-service to the LPF's hot issues.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Craven criminal-coddling catering

Sometimes I wonder whether the reality I see here in the Netherlands is distorted. I've tried to have my head examined to see if there's a giant distorting lens attached to my perceptive faculties. That came up negative, so I have to conclude that either the medical community in this country is part of the Conspiracy, or that this place is really utterly grotesque and surreal. Please step over here, and behold the Low Countries through the looking glass.

In recent news, we've heard that the police won't even bother to investigate burglaries anymore, but in order to maintain law and order, you will now be subject to compulsory searches for no other reason than being in a certain area at a certain time. And if you happen to be one of the car-owning class (which puts you in the Highly Suspect category), the government has plans to keep track of your whereabouts. No wonder 65% of the population is unhappy with the police.

But if you're wondering where the proceeds from the extortionate taxation are going, well, look no further than this: it's being used in part to make sure criminals are comfortable. Specifically, it's being used to make sure one particular criminal is comfortable, Volkert van der G., the man accused of murdering Pim Fortuyn. You see, he's a vegan vegetarian, and the food that's cooked in the slammer is just not up to snuff. I mean, at one point, there was even melted cheese on his cauliflower! The horror! Can you imagine what that does to this poor, abused man of such high principles? Obviously, it's more important to make sure he is comfortable than, say, actually investigate and prosecute crime. So now, the cooks at the prison are being instructed in vegan vegetarian cooking. I'm delighted, delighted! to see my tax euros spent so considerately. Brings tears to my eyes.

For those who've not been following the Volkert Story, he's been on hunger strike too for a while. One of his demands for ending his hunger strike was better catering. He also wanted more privacy when his girlfriend visited. The one demand that was not honored was the removal of the 24-hour a day video monitoring of his cell. At one point he was apparently not far away from being too weak to do much anymore and in danger of dying within a few weeks. This led to a debate on whether he should be forcibly fed or allowed to die. On the one hand, it would set a questionable precedent with regard to the amount of force the state can use on its detainees. On the other hand, being in prison (although not yet tried or convicted) by necessity is an abridgement of individual rights. The main reason I don't want to see him dead yet is because there is a possibility that he might have had accomplices, and I want to avoid a Timothy McVeigh situation. After we've got all the facts and nailed any possible accomplices, I'm all in favor of frying the bastard.

Oh wait, we don't have capital punishment here. There is a non-trivial proportion of population in favor according to polls; the last one I could find puts support at 43%. Of course, this is not reflected by political parties that constitute the ruling elite. Perhaps I should trade that distorting lens for blinkers. Might make life less complicated...