Dutch voters vote against Big Brother law

Geweldig👍 Marie-Michèle Stokbroeks @mmstokbroeks van @D66Weert

Wijdt het verlies van @D66 aan het zwabberend landelijk beleid over het afschaffen van het #referendum

#uitslagenavond #nederlandkiest @APechtold @KeesVee @Gertjan_Hobert pic.twitter.com/8KrLamK7CG

— Maarten Kaskens (@Maarten_Kaskens) March 21, 2018

In this Dutch video, Ms Marie-Michèle Stokbroeks speaks. She is the leader of the ‘liberal’ D66 political party in the local council in Weert town in Limburg province. Yesterday, Dutch voters voted in local elections, and in a referendum for or against the government bill enabling Big Brother-style mass spying on citizens. D66 in Weert lost two of its three local council seats. Ms Stokbroeks says in the video that the national D66 leadership caused that big loss. Before last year’s parliamentary election, having referendums was a main point for D66. The party also voted against the Big Brother proposal.

However, after the election D66 joined a new government coalition with three right-wing parties. D66 dropped its opposition to the Big Brother law. They also agreed with a proposal by the new government abolishing all referendums. That proposal would make the Netherlands the only country ever to abolish referendums, except the no longer existing German Democratic Republic.

According to Ms Stokbroeks and many other commentators, that national D66 flip-flopping was the cause of the big local election losses of D66 yesterday; not only in Weert, but also elsewhere.

All votes have not been counted yet. But it looks like so many more people voted against the Big Brother law than for it, that the referendum was won by opponents of that anti-privacy law.