AP News, December 14th, 2006
Parliament defused a 24-hour constitutional crisis Thursday by halting the deportation of rejected asylum seekers and stripping the hard-line immigration minister of responsibility for most immigration policy.
Dutch politics had faced chaos Wednesday after the newly elected parliament censured Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk _ nicknamed "Iron Rita" for her tough anti-immigration measures _ after she refused to halt the expulsion of asylum seekers under a policy the government calls "Project Return Home."
A censure motion normally would require a minister to quit, but other ministers from Verdonk's Liberal Party, known as the VVD, threatened to walk out of the Cabinet if she were forced to resign. That would have brought down the caretaker government, a situation never anticipated by the framers of the Netherlands' constitution.
After nearly 12 hours of emergency talks, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's caretaker Cabinet grudgingly agreed to remove Verdonk from control of most immigration issues in the transition government. Her new official title is minister for integration and child protection.
The confrontation between parliament and the Cabinet came three weeks after national elections shifted the balance of power in the legislature from right-leaning parties to a group of six left and center-left parties.
Verdonk said her party backed off its threat to quit "in the interests of ruling the country." But she added: "It was a bizarre, black day yesterday."
She made international headlines last month on the eve of national elections by threatening to ban the Muslim burqa, but she became a political lame duck after her party was drubbed in the vote.
When the new parliament convened, leftist parties held a slim majority and voted an amnesty for 26,000 illegal immigrants who have been in the country longer than five years.
After a grueling debate, Verdonk told parliament on Wednesday she would not honor the vote. She said she would uphold the immigration law and resume deportations, refusing to agree to even a 24-hour freeze.
Parliament then passed a motion censuring her _ tantamount to dismissal _ but Verdonk did not resign.
"It's unbelievable, isn't it, that parliament would dismiss a minister and she would think she can stay in office?" said Wouter Bos, leader of the opposition Labor Party.
Verdonk, 51, a former prison warden, became the voice of many anti-immigrant Dutch in 2004, after filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by an Islamic radical of Moroccan ancestry.
Verdonk passed a raft of laws hiking visa fees, mandating citizenship classes for immigrants, and jailing asylum seekers declared illegal ahead of their deportation. New arrivals have fallen by half since she took office in 2003.
Balkenende is expected to retain his post in the next government because he leads the party with the most lawmakers.
But this week's debate was a clear signal that he will have to moderate his administration's tough stand on immigration.
He is expected to form a coalition with Labor and another left-leaning party, the Christian Union, both of which have called for a softer immigration policy.
