Justice minister Ard van der Steur has stepped down  after failing to convince MPs he did not mislead parliament by withholding information over a deal struck with a drugs criminal by his predecessor.

His resignation at an early stage of the debate suggest he ‘put his head on the block’ to save prime minister Rutte from having to answer some embarrassing questions himself, the Dutch papers write on Friday.

In its analysis, Trouw writes that Van der Steur’s resignation is ‘keeping Rutte out of the wind.’ Nieuwsuur journalist Bas Haan had suggested that Rutte had known more about the deal than he was willing to admit. ‘With Van der Steur gone, Rutte will no longer have to defend himself’, the paper writes.

Sacrificial offer

It’s another knock for the VVD, which now has a long record of ministers falling by the wayside, the papers says. However, ‘with the elections on the horizon this sacrificial offering is perhaps to be preferred to a scenario in which the minister stays on as an increasingly stronger whiff of political hanky-panky surrounds both the VVD and Labour.’

The Volkskrant saw a ‘more convincing and unapologetic Van der Steur than during any other earlier crisis debate.’ But he is going all the same and ‘the spotlights have been put on the trail of destruction caused by successive VVD ministers at the justice department and the credibility of VVD leader Rutte under whose auspices it all took place.’

‘But all will soon be forgotten as the VVD election campaign kicks off, at least that is what the party hopes. Van der Steur put his head on the block to limit the damage to Rutte,’ the paper concludes.

Willing to take risk

The NRC writes in its editorial that Van der Steur was already ‘damaged goods’ when he started his stint as justice minister in 2015 because ‘it was known that he was involved in advising then justice minister and fellow VVD member Ivo Opstelten about how to avoid pertinent questions about the deal.’

‘In spite of this, senior party officials, including prime minister Mark Rutte, were prepared to take the risk by putting Van der Steur and his dubious involvement in the deal forward for the job,’ the paper writes.

This led to a ‘political high wire act’ in 2015 when further investigations into the deal were carried out. The outcome was unavoidable, the NRC concludes, and ‘although the coalition won’t suffer too much the damage to the image of politics is considerable.’

Never a credit to the party

According to Elsevier Van der Steur was never ‘a credit to the VVD as a crime fighter, an image that the VVD likes to present to the voters.’ On the contrary, ‘he gave the impression he never got on top of the issues and to be more preoccupied with his own position.’

Elsevier notes that instead of admitting his failings  the ex-minister sounded mainly peeved that the opposition refused to listen to his arguments.’

He may have been right, Elsevier writes because ‘the opposition parties enjoy nothing so much as seeing a VVD minister topple and crash.  But the fact is that Van der Steur had been withholding information from parliament from the time he was an MP. His position had simply become untenable,’ the magazine said.