Hirsi Ali Row Brings Down [Dutch] Government

[Kellanved]

The political fallout from the Hirsi Ali crisis took its ultimate scalp Thursday night when the Dutch government collapsed. New elections will now follow after a minor Dutch political party withdrew its support for Prime Minister Balkenende's government.

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende paid a visit to Queen Beatrix this morning to offer his government's resignation. His coalition government collapsed in acrimony last night after the liberal D66 party, a junior partner in the coalition, supported a vote of no-confidence in Balkenende's government and two ministers resigned from his cabinet.

The move was prompted by the continuing row over former politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Dutch immigration minister Rita Verdonk had threatened to strip the Somali-born conservative politician of her citizenship after Hirst Ali admitted falsifying parts of asylum application. Verdonk, nickname "Iron Rita" because of her hard-line immigration policies, was forced to withdraw the threat after a lengthy parliamentary debate, but the D66 party was not satisfied and demanded the immigration minister's resignation. "A rift was created with my party and I feel there is no other way but to withdraw support for this government," D66 party leader Lousewies van der Laan told parliament.

Prime Minister Balkenende whose Christian Democratic party is the largest grouping in the Dutch parliament, must now wait to see if he has sufficient support to lead a minority government until elections can be held later in the year. New elections could take place as early as September which the opposition Labour party is expected to win.

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http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,424458,00.html


Well, now hardly a "coalition" government is left. Seeing how Ali will feel at AEI will be interesting as well - she's been an unbearably smug character in European politics, enjoying her role as excuse for the RW's position, while she would never have been able to get a political career statrted on tha platform.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. So Hirsi Ali still has her Dutch citizenship?

And presuably could therefore stay in the Netherlands if she wanted. But she has taken up the AEI job anyway.

I'm surprised the government has fallen over this - the report I'd seen did seem to show Hirsi Ali's life in Kenya was OK - the one question was whether she was forced into marriage. But if that was the problem, shouldn't she have used that as her claim for asylum? I can see why a politician trying to cut immigration would seize an opportunity to use a public case of fraud in the asylum process. It may be grandstanding, but Verdonk was surely trying to enforce the letter of the law.