The Cabinet and the House of Representatives need to become more empathetic in trying to restore citizens’ political confidence, says Director Karen van Oudenhoven of the Social and Cultural Planning Office (SCP).
Four out of ten Dutch people say ministers and members of the House of Representatives are not interested in what they think, according to a forthcoming SCP study, Van Oudenhoven said in the Buitenhof programme.
‘Seriously’
That so many people say the government listens too little to citizens, Van Oudenhoven calls “serious”. His message to national politicians is to listen much more carefully and be aware of the differences between people. Politicians and policy makers should also have less distrust of people and not overestimate people’s self-sufficiency.
Politicians and political officials must ‘become much more empathetic’, is the message that Van Oudenhoven wants to convey to ‘The Hague’. Even “where the citizen meets the government at the counter” more attention should be paid to what he lives and what matters to that citizen. Politicians need to have “a much greater sense of what citizens are feeling”. This also emerges from the research, Van Oudenhoven points out. “People just say: the government and politicians don’t listen to us.”
The research findings referenced by the SCP director will be published in the ongoing SCP Citizen Perspectives Survey, to be released in late December.
Source: BNR
Fernando Dowling is an author and political journalist who writes for 24 News Globe. He has a deep understanding of the political landscape and a passion for analyzing the latest political trends and news.
