Wilders shuns local elections, sets sights on 2011

Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) will only run in two municipalities for the 2010 local elections; Wilders is planing to go all out for the 2011 legislative elections.

By deciding to run in only two cities, The Hague and Almere, for the local elections in March 2010, Geert Wilders has chosen maximum security and minimal risk.

When he announced his strategy for the local elections on last Saturday, the PVV leader made it clear that he has set his goals on the next legislative elections, which will be held in May 2011 at the latest. That is when Wilders wants to cash in his projected victory in the opinion polls – a tripling of the PVV's current nine seats in the Dutch parliament.

A second goal is the March 2011 elections for the provincial councils. These are important because the 75 members of the upper house of the Dutch parliament are elected through the provincial governments. "We want to be ready to rule and in order to rule you need to be in the upper house as well," Wilders told the ANP press agency.

In the meantime Wilders wants to avoid trouble in his young party, and there was a good risk of trouble if Wilders had attempted to find enough qualified candidates to run in the local elections in more places.

Apart from the question whether Wilders could have found enough qualified candidates, there was a risk of disagreement over the PVV policy.

What if the local PVV chapter in The Hague had a different view on how to tackle street crime than the Gouda branch? Wilders has wanted to limit that risk by only running in two places where he is almost guaranteed an election victory without the risk of losing control over his party's strategy. (He is not even running in his own home town, Venlo.)

Until now the Party for Freedom has been controlled by only one person: Wilders himself. He is the one who decides the strategy and who is the public image of the party. He is closely and personally monitoring the intake of new candidates. "We have not found enough people that I am willing to vouch for," Wilders has admitted. "To run under those circumstances would be shooting yourself in the foot."

At the same time, by running in just two municipalities Wilders is assured of continued publicity. He will be able to play a role in the campaign, and if he wins enough votes in The Hague and Almere he is bound to be front page news the next day.

Wilders has admitted that he is trying to avoid a repeat of the "LPF fiasco", a reference to the internal struggles in the party of populist politician Pim Fortuyn. His LPF party frittered away when it joined the government after Fortuyn's assassination in 2002.

Wilders' strategy is paying off so far: his party came second in the Dutch elections for European parliament and different opinion polls predict his seats in Dutch parliament would at least triple if elections were held today.