‘We govern in order to survive’, Maxime Verhagen said when the Christian Democrats limped into the cabinet following their thrashing at the elections. A year has gone by and the Nos asks whether the CDA is showing any signs of recovery.

Political correspondent Joost Vullings is quite clear about it: it isn’t. The polls predict the CDA would even sink below its present historic low of 21 seats.
Wilder’s whipping boy
‘And on the news programme Pauw & Witteman on Tuesday night, we see CDA immigration minister Gerd Leers trying to explain why he was told to see Geert Wilders to discuss the fact that he called ‘immigration an enrichment of society’. ‘That won’t do the popularity of the party any good. And the voters will hate it. It makes Leers look like Wilder’s whipping boy’, says Vullings.
According to the correspondent, the party has trouble manifesting itself, crowded as it is by the VVD and the PVV. ‘They had hoped that making the PVV responsible for cabinet policies would make it less popular but it hasn’t happened.’
Different course

It looks as if the Christian Democrats are setting out on a different course. The budget debates intimated as much.
‘The focus in The Hague is very much on the economy, the euro and Greece and naturally these subjects are hugely important to the Christian Democrats as well. But parliamentary party leader Sybrand van Haersma Buma wants to get to grips with issues connected with society too, or as he called it ‘the recovery of identity and cohesion in society.’
The party doesn’t have a new political agenda yet. ‘But its clearly contemplating a new direction. It seems to be continuation of Jan-Peter Balkenende’s norms and values agenda. Bill Clinto famousy said ‘It’the economy, stupid’. Van Haersma Buma doesn’t agree: It’s society, stupid!’
This is an unofficial translation