By Jhr. mr. Alexander W. Beelaerts van Blokland, Justice (Judge) in the Court of Appeal and Special Advisor International Affairs of the City of The Hague.
In March there will be two elections in The Netherlands on the 18th. Not for the national parliament, not for the local municipal council, but for two other democratic institutions. I will explain briefly.
Although The Netherlands is a small country, we do have between the national State and the local cities and towns twelve ‘provinces’. In the past they were much more powerful and important than nowadays. Untill the French occupied us in 1795, this country hardly existed as a national state: the provinces were more or less independant in many fields. Some provinces were powerful, others were not. In the 17th century the most powerful province was Holland. That’s why many people in the world ever since confuse ‘The Netherlands’ with ‘Holland’: a lot of people think that they are the same. The elections of March 18th are about the governments of each of the twelve provinces.
But something else is much more important. The members of the province’s parlement who will be elected on March 18th, will elect in May the members of the (national) Senate, the ‘Eerste Kamer’ (First Chamber). And that is of huge importance for the national politics. The parties of the coalition -now the liberal VVD and the social democratic PvdA- do have a majority in the ‘Tweede Kamer’ (Second Chamber) but not in the Senate and most people expect that after May they will have even a smaller minority in the Senate than they have now. If that happens, it will be for those two parties even more difficult to govern than it is now.
And on the same day we will have other elections as well. As you probably will know The Netherlands is mostly situated under sea level. In this country there has always been a struggle against water . We have special institutions for that: the ‘Hoogheemraadschappen’, the ‘Waterschappen’ etc. and even those are controlled by democratic elected counsils. One can wonder what the difference is between a socialist dike, a liberal dike and a christian democratic dike, but nevertheless we can elect representatives of our own favorite political party in those democratic bodies about water.
