As Wilders is negotiating his way into a government, right hand man Martin Bosma has taken on the role of seemingly impartial parliamentary chairman, and is fast becoming the acceptable face of the PVV, says journalist Ariejan Korteweg.

Since the elections, national politics has been in the grip of a radical process: the normalisation of the PVV. It’s an undertaking that no one – including the PVV itself – thought would ever present itself. The PVV as the clear winner – who saw that one coming?

To some extent, politics is role play. The CDA of the opposition  – from 2012 to 2017 – was different from the CDA of Mark Rutte’s third and fourth coalitions. The PvdA as a governing party – from 2012 to 2017 – was a much more timid proposition before its recasting as an opposition party. Dilan Yesilgöz, the VVD leader, comes across less self-assured than Dilan Yesilgöz the justice minister.

The PVV never needed to take part in this role play. The party seemed to be firmly nailed to the opposition benches, from which it could spout unlimited criticism at anything successive cabinets came up with. The only time Wilders had to tone it down a bit was when he agreed to prop up Mark Rutte’s minority cabinet from the sidelines. The rest of the time he only had one role: that of far-right firebrand.

How things have changed. Every day, Wilders is having to don a suit he’s not used to wearing. As the leader of the biggest party, it is his task to form a working coalition. What is more, Wilders wants to be in government. That is why he is so willing to make concessions about the rule of law, Islam, migration, climate, and support for Ukraine – issues he was implacable about before. And it’s all to become a minister at last.

Wilders’ concessions

And yet, the normalisation of the party is not a done deal. Wilders’s concessions are so out of character it’s making you wonder. If a party is prepared to sacrifice its principles, then what price those radical opinions? All that talk of banning the Koran, closing down mosques, a fake parliament, D66 judges, and scum journalists, was it all just gesture politics?

There is one place where the PVV has managed to be accepted wholeheartedly by all sections of national politics – the chairmanship of the lower house of parliament, a key position in our democracy.

For Martin Bosma, the post is a dream come true. An MP on stand-by for years, Bosma would only talk to journalists about becoming the parliamentary chairman. His efforts went into his PhD. research, his speeches about the media and culture, in which he lambasted the NPO and left-wing hobby horses, and into his favourite job of deputy chairman, which he held for years.

So devoted was he to the ideas of the Prince’s Flag and a Greater Netherlands, he quickly built a reputation as the best chairman the lower house would never have.

That is, until December 14, 2023. On that day, 75 out of 146 MPs elected Martin Bosma the chairman of the lower house of parliament. Much research has gone into the defection of voters to the PVV. But why 75 MPs thought it might be a good idea to be represented by a proponent of the PVV at the Ketikoti celebrations, or the national remembrance ceremony on Dam Square, is as yet unclear.

Fun and laughter

Ever since his appointment, Bosma has been the life and soul of the party. His jokes are met with generous laughter, his brisk tempo is appreciated and the poetry reading that marks the start of every session is seen as the beginning of a fine tradition.

“I’m just a robot”,  Bosma used to say whenever he was a candidate for the post. And he was right, because Bosma the chairman does not flaunt his political preferences. PVV MP Dion Graus is not treated any differently to MP Esther Ouwehand of the Partij voor de Dieren.

Does this mean Bosma was a robot before he became chairman? Were the head rag tax, the call to ban culture subsidies and climate madness part of a ploy too deep to fathom? Did the PVV simply take on the role of radical right-wing name-caller all these years? Was it all for show, in the same way Bosma seems to regard the chairmanship as a form of play-acting? If a robot makes the best chairman, they might as well have elected a civil servant.

Former chairmen and women Vera Bergkamp, Khadija Arib, Gerdi Verbeet or Frans Weisglas never sounded off about other parties or communities during their time as MPs. Bosma never stopped. “The network corruption of D66 has eaten its way into our broadcasting system like a venereal disease,” he said only last year.

We are watching Wilders’s struggle but we forget that, for the last three months, it has been a laugh a minute with Bosma, who is such a card, and who has been so clever in covering up everything, including his past, under a blanket of irony. Thus is the house of democracy guarded by a prominent proponent of an undemocratic party. There, the normalisation of the PVV has been a success already.

Ariejan Korteweg is a journalist and a former political commentator for the Volkskrant. This column was published earlier in the Volkskrant