(NEWS AND UNRESTRAINED COMMENTARY)
The election for the House of Representatives in the Netherlands was not set to happen for two more years but the current government led by outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte was unable to reach consensus on accepting asylum seekers leading to the election call.
Rutte announced his retirement and is moving on to apparently become the next Secretary General of NATO.
His replacement as leader of the VVD Liberals (Free Market Capitalist, Centrist, Mainstream Conservative, Globalist) Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius born in Turkey her father Kurdish and mother Turkish.
She ran a spirited campaign hoping to keep the VVD as the Netherlands leading lower house party but in the end a rough night the party shedding 10 seats moving from 34 down to 24 seats.
Earlier this year the Senate-Local Government elections were fueled by grassroots opposition to the climate change-cow gas rules slated to gut the agriculture industry in the Netherlands.
The VVD took a beating in that election for the 75 Senate seats only winning seven with the BBB Farmers Party picking up the largest number of seats (16).
Going into this election the BBB only had 1 seat in the House of Representatives tonight it moved up to 5 seats possibly more once all votes are counted. The BBB had polled in the 20-30 seat range earlier this year.
But the issues of Immigration and Islamization seemed to come together for the benefit of Geert Wilders who was once a VVD Liberal before breaking away over the tide of Muslim migration and the change it was bringing to the Netherlands including acts of violence.
One notorious act of violence was the 2004 murder of film director Theo van Gogh by a Moroccan immigrant. Van Gogh directed the film "Submission" which confronted the issue of abuse of women by Islam. It was written by Ayaan Hirsi. Ali once a Muslim then a longtime Atheist who recently announced conversion to Christianity.
Also in 2004 two suspects were caught after a one-hour siege by police suspected of trying to kill Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wilders.
Geert Wilders spent part of his youth in Israel working on a collective farm and the Dutch intelligence agency once investigated him as a suspected Israeli agent.
In his political career as Party of Freedom leader Wilders has been in opposition and in coalition government.
Wilders went into this election campaign saying he was open to being in government again and tempering his views. Towards the end of the campaign Dilan Yesilgoz suggested her willingness to work with Wilders after standing off earlier.
As the election campaign unfolded the BBB Farmers Party lost traction in polling and a new force known as New Social Contract rose to the top tier.
NSC's leader veteran Christian Democrat politician Pieter Omtzigt said he wasn't interested in being Prime Minister. As NSC's poll numbers faded slightly towards the end of the campaign Omtzigt turned around suggesting he might want to be Prime Minister.
But tonight his party in fourth place and Geert Wilders seems to be the man who will be given the task of forming the next Dutch government.
Wilders will have to find the partners willing to join him to reach 76 or more of the 150 House of Representatives seats.
Out of the running parties like the Labor-Green Alliance with 25 seats but the NSC could be a potential partner and it seems very likely the VVD may join up.
Those three parties would be at 81 seats.
The BBB Farmers Party a likely partner simply for the sake of their 16 Senate seats which would be helpful in moving legislation.
Getting to the vote count late into the night the PVV Party of Freedom at 37 seats with 96.9 percent of the vote counted. The Labor-Green Alliance 25 seats, the VVD Liberals 24, New Social Contract 20, the D66 (Social Liberals) 9 and the BBB Farmers Party at 7 seats.
It was rough night for two parties named "Christian" in the Netherlands the Christian Democrats (CDA) cut from 15 to 5 seats losing to both the New Social Contract of Pieter Omtzigt and the BBB Farmers Party.
The CDA was in the Rutte government pushing the climate change cow gas rules.
Also hurt the Christian Union (CU) another party in the Rutte government going down from 5 to 3 seats. The Liberal Evangelical CU took a strong position favoring a more liberal approach to migrants (asylum seekers) in the Rutte government's internal dispute that led to the election call.
Meanwhile the Conservative Evangelical SGP Party retained its 3 seats in the House.
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