ER Editor: Dutch politics has had a few ‘step-downs’ of late. Now they have a health minister no less, a professor and doctor, Ernst Kuipers, who took the country through Covid (or a part of the vaccine phase) from January 2022 onwards, doing a disappearing act. He landed in the ministerial job from years at the Erasmus University Medical Centre, the centre where the Netherlands very own Fauci, Marion Koopmans, hails from.
This gives us a total of 8 politicians who have vacated their posts. Are there others? —
Kuipers is the third D66 minister in a short time to leave the outgoing Rutte IV cabinet.
For example, outgoing Minister Sigrid Kaag (Finance) left on January 8. She then immediately started her new job as UN coordinator for humanitarian aid and reconstruction in Gaza. Gunay Uslu resigned in December as outgoing State Secretary for Culture and Media to lead the travel organization Corendon.
Politicians from other parties also left their posts early. For example, Minister Wopke Hoekstra (Foreign Affairs, CDA) left in September last year and Minister Dennis Wiersma (Primary and Secondary Education, VVD) left in June.
Minister Henk Staghouwer (Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, Christian Union) was the first to resign in September 2022.
Browsers will translate both Dutch news reports.
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Sudden departure of healthcare minister Kuipers still a mystery: ‘An ugly spectacle’
THE HAGUE – The mysterious departure of healthcare minister Ernst Kuipers is leading to growing annoyance and irritation in politics in The Hague. The D66 member left his cabinet post three weeks ago, without saying where. “It is still a mystery,” says a minister. “Very bad for the reputation of politics.”
The VVD is also talking about it shamefully: “Rat behavior”, is how a party cannon characterizes the unexplained flag flight.
The lack of clarity is encouraging guesswork. In a statement, Kuipers indicated that he was leaving for a top international job, but the persistent story in the political corridors is that he does not yet have a new job and may therefore have left his ministerial job for nothing.
Party leader Rob Jetten does not pour clear wine about it. He only says that his party colleague’s new position is ‘in sight’. A spokesperson for D66 swears that Kuipers does have a new job, but acknowledges that it is taking longer than expected due to ‘procedures’.
The cabinet finds the issue painful. The fact that the healthcare minister left without a trace just before he had to discuss his ministry’s billion-dollar budget with the House of Representatives does not make things any better. As a result, VVD minister Conny Helder had to take over his work head on.
Even in the cabinet, they still don’t know why Kuipers left so suddenly. “Maybe he had an epiphanic moment?” a government official jokes, referring to Rutte, who said this last summer about his decision to quit as Prime Minister.
Rumbling
There had been dissatisfaction about D66 members in the cabinet for some time. Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Sigrid Kaag and State Secretary Gunay Uslu also resigned prematurely. A CDA member recently said that if another D66 member leaves, all CDA members will also leave the cabinet. This is now being nuanced. It was just a sigh of irritation, it sounds now. The fact that the D66 squadron so easily puts aside the national interest is seen as ‘an ugly display’.
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Walking dead already.