PvdA and GroenLinks say they will present such a motion to Nieuwsuur or support it. Opposition leader Geert Wilders also wants Rutte to step down as prime minister immediately. “He needs to leave immediately,” Wilders tweeted.
As for PvdA leader Attje Kuiken and GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver, a business prime minister will replace them until elections are held and a new cabinet is in place. The interim prime minister must keep his distance from politics. “There are really suitable candidates,” Klaver thinks. Kuiken wants to remove “the political sting” and “the political sting is now called Mark Rutte.”
Difficult
Experts don’t think a business prime minister can be appointed just like that. “It just doesn’t work that way,” says historian Bert van den Braak on Twitter. The House of Representatives must then initiate an entire training process, with a scout, an informant and training negotiations. Constitutional law professor Wim Voermans agrees. An interim prime minister simply cannot do without a completely new interim cabinet, he says: ‘In our system it is not possible to parachute a new MP into an interim cabinet.’
Parties such as the SP, Party for the Animals, the BBB and small right-wing parties should also support a motion. “Let this be the end of the Rutte era,” PvdD leader Esther Ouwehand said when the government fell. PS leader Lilian Marijnissen wants a ‘Netherlands without Rutte’. BBB leader Caroline van der Plas confirms her support for the motion against De Telegraaf.
The question is less certain whether D66, CDA or ChristenUnie will also support a motion. The latter party came into a sharp collision with Rutte this week. Irreconcilable differences between mainly ChristenUnie and VVD led to the downfall of the cabinet. PvdA member Kuiken also points to the harsh words the CDA in particular has made on the prime minister’s position.
Furthermore, it is not clear whether the PSC will vote in favor of such a motion. The small Conservative-Christian party is often loyal to the cabinet and doesn’t easily back a no-confidence vote. The House of Representatives is debating the fall of the cabinet and the ensuing political crisis all day.