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Dutch Vote for Dead Candidate Wednesday
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| Dutch Politician Pim Fortuyn Funeral
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THE
HAGUE, May 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As the Netherlands
prepare to go to the polls Wednesday, May 15, to choose the members of
the new parliament that will lead the country for the next 4 years,
the party of murdered far-right leader Pim Fortuyn looked set to cause
a political earthquake by becoming one of the four largest parties in
parliament.
The
Dutch elections mark an unprecedented case in the whole world, as
people are to vote for a dead candidate killed in a first of its kind
political assassination in the history of the Dutch kingdom since its
establishment in 1815 following the historical Vienna Convention.
The
Dutch Government has decided to go ahead with the general elections,
following the murder of Fortuyn. The votes given to Fortuyn will go to
his party list, as the Netherlands adopts the system of proportional
representation, making it nearly impossible to get an outright
majority in the lower house of parliament.
It
was impossible to remove Fortuyn’s name from the candidate’s list
because it is illegal to do that after the start of the electoral
campaign, and it was not possible either to postpone the elections
because the government was afraid of accusations to be involved in the
assassination.
Since
the September 11 events, Fortuyn has become a unique political
phenomenon. No Dutch political figure has raised so much controversy
like he did in such a short period.
He
burst on to the political scene last year. After years of voicing his
discontent about the government in The Hague in a magazine column, he
decided to go into national politics and joined the Liveable
Netherlands party, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Fortuyn,
openly gay, won wide support with his fiery calls to end immigration
in a supposedly liberal country where one of every eight people -- two
of 16 million -- are not of Dutch origin. He was also anti-Islam.
Holland
gave Fortuyn the biggest funeral service since that of Queen
Beatrice in the early eighties. A religious service, conducted by the
Bishop of Rotterdam, was held Friday, May 10, in the city's Roman
Catholic cathedral, where tens of thousands of people filed past
Fortuyn's white coffin as it lay in state on Thursday.
Many
Muslim figures took part in the funeral, emphasizing their refusal to
the policies of violence and assassination, as well as their grief for
the murdered leader.
The
maverick 54-year-old politician was killed by a lone gunman in
Hilvesum last Monday, just 10 days before the general election which
he had expected to signal his major breakthrough into mainstream
politics.
A
32-year-old animal rights activist, named by the Dutch press as
Volkert van der Graaf, is in custody charged with his murder.
Additional
Reporting by Khaled Showkat, IOL Netherlands Correspondent
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