Cogs can think.

And how we stirred up The Hague! Partij Voor De Dieren has won big time! They (we?) have gained 2 seats in parliament! They (we) started at 0, and now they (we?) are at 2! Congratulations to Marianne Thieme and her team, and of course everyone who had the guts (like me) to vote for something truly different.

Twiek is going to The Hague, baby!

Anyway, we are in a bit of trouble in The Netherlands at this point. You see, there is no easy coalition to be formed. In any case there is no possible combination of two parties, meaning any coalition, in order to have a majority (76 seats), must consist of at least 3 parties.

The most logical coalition at this point is CDA (41, -3), PvdA (32, -10), and ChristenUnie (6, +3), which is a centre-left coalition. CDA has remained the biggest party despite the 3 seat loss, so it’s CDA who gets to form the government; however, the coalition as just described consists of two parties who have lost, so whether or not this makes any democratic sense is debatable. At best.

The big winners of today are the Socialist Party (26, +17!) and the Party for Freedom (anti-Islam far-right nutjobs, 9, +9). We can forget about the Party for Freedom, but we obviously cannot disregard the SP. A complete left cabinet (Groenlinks [Green Left], SP, PvdA [labour party]) is impossible, since they do not have a majority.

Any other combination leaves great difficulties ideologically speaking, and hence we can look forward to a very interesting formation period. What intrigues me the most is that no matter what cabinet forms, many hot issues now can be pushed through the lower house. For instance, there is a majority now who supports a general pardon for asylum seekers stuck in our old, previous immigration law, and yes, there is even a majority of potentially-relatively (boy do I feel smart) animal friendly parties, meaning my party of choice might be able to make some serious progress in reducing barbarism in the animal world.

To sum it up: Partij Voor De Dieren comes into parliament with 2 seats (very good thing), CDA remains the biggest party (good thing), SP wins majorly by making the PvdA smaller (good thing), D66 (a sort of anti-royalist party wanting to change our political system into that of the US) is almost dead (very, very, very good thing!), Party For Freedom gets 9 seats (very, very, very, very, very, very bad thing).

Weird election eve.