'Dutch Donald Trump' Geert Wilders heads for Netherlands election victory

23 November 2023 , 10:55

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Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, known as PVV (Image: AP)

The far-right, anti-Islam Geert Wilders has won a massive victory in Dutch parliamentary elections, a result that will likely send shockwaves through Europe.

The Dutch Donald Trump is now in pole position to form the next governing coalition and possibly become the Netherlands' next prime minister. An exit poll revealed his landslide with the Party for Freedom, known as PVV, that appeared to even take the 60-year-old by surprise. He would be the country's first far-right leader.

The exit poll published by national broadcaster NOS said that Wilders' party won 35 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament, more than double the 17 he won at the last election. Final official results were only expected on Thursday.

Wilders' election program includes calls for a referendum on the Netherlands leaving the European Union, a total halt to accepting asylum-seekers and migrant pushbacks at Dutch borders. It also advocates the "de-Islamization" of the Netherlands, although he has been milder about Islam during this election campaign than in the past.

The closest party to Wilders one was an alliance of the centre-left Labor Party and Green Left, which was forecast to win 26 seats. But its leader Frans Timmermans made clear that he would never enter into a coalition with Wilders. He said: "We will never form a coalition with parties that pretend that asylum seekers are the source of all misery.

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"And in the coming days and weeks we will increasingly see how difficult, how important, how essential our task is to stand up for the Netherlands where we exclude no one, to stand up for the Netherlands where we embrace everyone to stand up for the Netherlands, where we do not look at what your background is, what your religion is, what your skin colour is."

The historic victory came one year after the win of far-right Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni. And Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban who has grimly harsh stances on migration congratulated Wilders. Wilders’ inflammatory views on Islam have prompted death threats and he has lived under heavy police protection for years.

In 2009, the British government refused to let him visit the country, saying he posed a threat to "community harmony and therefore public security." Wilders had been invited to Britain by a member of Parliament’s upper house, the House of Lords, to show his 15-minute film "Fitna", which criticises the Quran as a "fascist book." The film sparked violent protests around the Muslim world in 2008 for linking Quranic verses with footage of terrorist attacks.

Rachel Hagan