Cartoon Tuesday: Politics ……..

Tomorrow is Election Day, elections for The Tweede Kamer ("second chamber"). Another chance to make my voice heard, another chance to change the political agenda (as if I could do that) for the next four years (if the new cabinet will last that long). Usually I have a fairly good idea which party is going to get my vote, but this year I really don’t know. I am what they call a “hovering voter”.

This year we can chose from 20 political parties and I don’t think that number makes it any easier. 5 of those are the real big ones, 5 are sort of medium size and the rest are new or really small or almost non existent. Two of them don’t even have a name; some of the others have (IMO) nasty names like Party for freedom (or Freedom Party – apparently we are at war and I missed it or something), One NL, Party for the Netherlands. They aren’t going to get my vote. So that still leaves 17 parties to choose from. Okay, the nameless ones aren’t going to get my vote so that is another two gone. If they can’t even come up with a name, I am not sure they could come up with an interesting political program. I am not going to vote on a party with a religious background so that means another 3 gone….still 12 left. Let’s see what left: Party for animals (hmmmz… if they were called “Party Animals” I would consider them ;)), Netherlands transparent, Ad Bos Collective (sounds like a band name), United Senior Party, Fortuyn, Liberal Democratic Party, Continued Direct Democratic Party and the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. Wow, that’s another 8 gone…..still left with 4:
- Labour Party (PVDA)
- Socialist Party (SP)
- Green Left (Groen Links)
- Democrats 66 (D66)
Kind of an odd selection, but at least it’s a lot less then the 20 I started out with :) Earlier this afternoon I took a little test to see which party has opinions closest to mine and funnily enough these were all in the top5.

I still have some reading to do before I can decide, I guess. In the meantime I’ll keep hovering around, happily :)