Dutch P.M. might swap coalition ally

Press, 8 September 1989, Page 6

Dutch P.M. might swap coalition ally

NZPA-Reuter The Hague The Dutch Prime Minister, Ruud Lubbers,! has won a third term in office on a platform promising to clean up thq environment, but he seems set to abandon his Right-Wing Liberal coalition partners for Labour. j Mr Lubbers’s Christian Democratic Party kept all its 54 seats to remairi the 1 largest party in the ,150member Lower House of Parliament in yesterday’s general election, final results showed. '■ But voters punished! the Liberals, who toppled! Mr Lubbers’s centre-right coalition in May in a row on funding the Prime Minister’s aliibitious plans to cut pollution by 70 per cent in the next 20 yeajrs. The Liberals lost five of, their 27 seats. Mr Lubbers would hpve a majority of just one if he were to continue jhis alliance with the. Liberals in the new Parliament. Mr Lubbers refused to say whether he . wduld prefer to switch to the Left-leaning ?. Labour Party, which’ lost three of its 52 seats, letting the two parties vie for his

favours. The Christian Democratic parliamentary floor leader, Bert de Vries, said it would be “very, very difficult” for his party to form a coalition with the Liberals. The Labour leader, Wim Kok, who has moderated policies to make his .party more acceptable to Mr Lubbers, made it" clear that he wanted to join a coalition with the Christian Democrats. ’ Under Dutch tradition.

Queen Beatrix consults all parties before asking the leader of the largest to form a new coalition in negotiations that could take months. Mr Lubbers, in his first two terms, revived the sagging economy by bringing down the .nation’s budget deficit, reducing welfare spending and giving the Dutch their first tax cut in years. ■ Now he says he wants to use the wealth generated by economic recovery to double spending on cleaning up pollution to SNZI2.7 billion a year by 1994. Environmental issues dominated the election campaign. The ecology-oriented Green-Left alliance, made up of four small parties, won six seats, doubling its strength in Parliament. The Left-leaning D’66, the first Dutch party to campaign for the environment more than 20 years ago, gained three seats, and now has 12. The only newcomer in the Parliament was a neoNazi Central Democratic candidate, which won one seat.