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Last week's election in the Netherlands was closely observed the world over, especially in France and Germany, where elections are due soon, as bellwether for Europe's populist movements. The main contest was between the incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte's conservative-liberal party, VVD, and the far right Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders who had vowed to take his country out of the European Union, close all mosques and ban the (holy) Quran. Wilders' hate spewing rhetoric had turned Muslim immigrants into the key electoral issue. Even an otherwise liberal Rutte had felt forced to make the rather uncharacteristic remarks, directed at Muslim immigrants, that those who did not make the effort to fit in should pack their bags.

In the event, voters turned out in record numbers - 80.2 percent of the electorate - casting their ballots mostly for the liberal parties. Rutte's VVD won the largest number of seats though its junior partner in the ruling alliance, the Labour Party, suffered a historic defeat, getting just nine seats and losing 29 seats. Wilders' Freedom Party came in second with 20 seats out of 150. Significantly, the Green-Left party led by a young politician, Jesse Klaver, whose father is of Moroccan origin and mother of a mixed Dutch and Indonesian background, made important gains, winning 14 seats against its previous 4 seats. The result is widely seen as a victory of tolerance and liberal values, and a push back against a wave of populism that brought victory to Donald Trump in the US and of Brexit vote in Britain. It brought relief not only to the Dutch mainstream parties but those in France and Germany where elections are due in April and September, respectively. While Chancellor Angela Merkel is happy to see a high turnout leading to "a very pro-European result", for the centrist French presidential candidate, Emmanuel Marcon, the Dutch people's vote comes as a reassurance that "a breakthrough for the extreme right is not a foregone conclusion."

In fact, Prime Minister Rutte had described his country's election as a quarter-final against populism. Despite the quarter-final win, the populist movements remain a serious challenge in the semi-final and final contests. The economic slowdown and the resultant frustration felt by the electorate is used by populist leaders to accuse establishment elites of ignoring the common man, and to call for changing the rules of the game. They want to shut the door on immigration and reverse globalisation, citing economic difficulties and rising unemployment. For the advancement of their agendas, they fuel nationalist sentiments, stoking up xenophobia bordering on racism. Taking a leaf out of Trump's playbook who is building a wall on Mexican border and is insistent on putting a ban on immigrants from six Muslim countries as well as his "America First" slogan, one of the frontrunners in the upcoming French election, far right National Front party leader, Marine Le Pen, has been railing against immigrants and describing the electoral contest as one between "patriots and globalists." The lesson Europe's liberal elites need to draw from this election is that as long as economic malaise stays and they do not come up with a more fair economic deal for all, populist movements will remain strong.



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