Yesterday, Job Cohen announced he will resign as the leader of the
Labour Party (PVDA), effective immediately. And of course, immediately thereafter everybody started speculating about who should become his successor. One of the names mentioned was the one of Ronald Plasterk.
I honestly don’t think this is the right man for the job.
Ronald Plasterk was Minister
of Education, Culture and Science from February 22, 2007 until February 23,
2010 in the Cabinet Balkenende IV. During his tenure he was responsible for the declining quality of education at various levels of education. One of his proposals was cutting the allowance for students
and raising the fees for universities and for this he has been rightly strongly criticized by the students unions. It is my strong conviction that Plasterk, who advocates himself as a strong believer in individual excellence, just tries to mimic the American educational system without taking into account the unique features of the Dutch culture, and observes the world from his own ivory tower. He is a politician, and by definition, not interested in the truth, what is right or wrong, but just in the way you present it to the public.
A Chinese proverb says: "He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not
know". This definitely applies to Mr. Plasterk. Above, you see him in a chearful pose, pretending to play the guitar. But every self-respecting guitar player, and surely those heroes that will perform at the upcoming ELCA festival on March 9, knows that this is not the way to play guitar and that there either must be a CD playing in the back or there must be a real guitar player behind those doors, whose name we will never know and who probably would do a better job when it comes to leading a political party, too.
The PVDA needs a frontman that understands that the Netherlands has no cheap labor, no big market of its own, no raw materials (apart from a little gas near Groningen) and thus only can manifest itself as one of the leading countries in the world by exploiting the unique things it has: an open culture and high-level knowledge. The Netherlands is leading in water management, probiotics, wafer steppers, and many more. This unique position has been slowly created over the last 30 years and is rapidly crumbling. From a country that once belonged to the world top when it comes to investments in education and research, we now are doing below average and many countries have surpassed the Netherlands, a.o. Finland and Ireland.
Of course, it is not only Plasterk who is to blame for all this, which has been a process of quite some years. However, he did not understand and pick up the challenge, either. Rather he pretends, just as on the picture above.
PVDA, please be smart; choose among your midst a leader who understands the needs of your party and our time, whether you will make it into the government next time or not. But please, no more Ronald Plasterk.
Wouter