THE HAGUE — Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende is cruising toward re-election in national elections today, thanks to rising incomes and economic growth after four years of cutbacks in the welfare state.
Three surveys published in the final week of campaigning found Mr. Balkenende’s center-right Christian Democratic Alliance party leads the opposition Social Democrats by between nine and 13 seats.
If the polls are confirmed by voters, it will represent a stunning reversal of fortunes for the bespectacled, boyish-looking politician known affectionately in the Netherlands as “Harry Potter.”
In local elections in May, his party was drubbed by center-left Labor leader Wouter Bos, a charismatic former Shell executive who had been considered to be a shoo-in for the post of prime minister.
But with the economy booming after years of recession and the jobless rate at its lowest level since May 2003, voters are in no mood to sanction the government, which is given much of the credit for the turnaround.
“There is still poverty in this country, but all in all, the average person is doing pretty well and that makes the position of the Christian Democrats much easier,” said Peter van Ham, senior research fellow at the Clingendael Institute for International Relations in The Hague.
Cutting welfare handouts, scrapping incentives for early retirement and opening up the health care system to competition is not the traditional way of getting elected in Europe.
But in a country that still adheres to the Protestant work ethic, the measures have been grudgingly accepted. They have also contributed to a sharp upturn in growth — to almost 3 percent this year — and higher disposable incomes.
The sense of economic optimism contrasts starkly with the gloomy mood that has prevailed for much of the four years that the alliance has been in power.
In the run-up to the 2002 elections, populist politician Pim Fortuyn was gunned down, and two years later filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was assassinated by a radical Islamist. Voters in this traditionally prosperous and laid-back country of 15 million also shocked Europe in 2005 when they resoundingly rejected a proposed European Union constitution.
Tensions between the Dutch and the country’s 1 million-strong Muslim community have dominated political debate for much of the past four years, but the issue was noticeably absent from this campaign — largely because most of the major parties agree with the government’s hard-line stance on illegal aliens and Islamic extremists.
However, in the final days of the campaign, Interior Minister Rita Verdonk angered some by calling for an outright ban on the burqa, a head-to-toe gown worn by devout Muslim women.
Mrs. Verdonk, a tough law-and-order minister known as “Iron Rita,” has said the ban is needed to fight ghettoization, but Muslim groups say the proposal is an overreaction to a minor problem.
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