4 July 2008

Negativity air lurks around Balkenende IV
The lower house of parliament starts its summer recess on Friday and  the cabinet will keep working for another week - and Trouw and De Telegraaf review the political season and predict what the future has in store for the fourth Balkenende cabinet.  

Neither paper is very positive: Trouw's headline reads "new disputes lurking on the horizon" and De Telegraaf goes with "trust in Balkenende IV sinks below zero".

Trouw's political editor writes that problems for Balkenende IV started piling up shortly after the beginning of the political season in September 2007 and the coalition came close to falling in November. A few of the more intractable problems were put on the backburner and creative solutions to a few thorny issues were pushed through in June.

However, Trouw predicts that a new set of problems, some of them actually leftovers from last season, will threaten cabinet unity as soon as the politicians come back from their summer holidays.

De Telegraaf's front page features a photograph of a beaming Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende at the annual barbecue to mark the end of the political season. However, readers of the populist paper don't think he has much to smile about.

Three thousand of them took part in the paper's survey on government and awarded the Balkenende cabinet an F for failure, saying. "This cabinet is light years away from ordinary people".

The most common complaint was "the government doesn't listen to what people want", closely followed by "this is the worst government with the highest taxes ever".

Dutch nationals to renounce Moroccan citizenship
The final day of the political circus is always a busy one and De Volkskrant reports that Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin on Thursday informed the lower house of parliament of his intention to approach the Moroccan government about allowing Dutch nationals of Moroccan origin to renounce Moroccan citizenship.

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