Hans van Mierlo, changer of Dutch politics, dies at 78

Former Dutch foreign minister and left-wing liberal leader, Hans van Mierlo, died at age 78 on Thursday. The founder of the D66 political party had been ill for some time.

"Hans is now living out his injury time", his fellow D66 party members said after he had had undergone a liver transplant in 2000. He managed to stretch that extra time for nearly a decade. He enjoyed those ten years because, as he said in an interview five years after the transplant: "Being dead is something you can do for a very long time." But on Thursday, Hans van Mierlo, the founder and figurehead of the left-wing liberal party in the Netherlands passed away at age 78.

He himself has now become part of history. Henricus Antonius Franciscus Maria Oliva van Mierlo -- or Hafmo, as his party members affectionately referred to him -- was a philosopher, a bohemian, a romantic, an orator, a bon vivant, a master of paradox, an eternal doubter and yes, of course, also a politician.

Above anything else, he was the political embodiment of the Dutch cultural revolution of the 1960s. The movement that never really became a revolution, because the Netherlands was a country where so-called 'repressive tolerance' quickly made D66 and Van Mierlo himself a part of the system they so maligned. Van Mierlo, who started out a critic of the state, died an honorary Minister of State. He himself would undoubtedly have appreciated the paradox.

Leitmotiv

There was one leitmotiv in the reasoning of Hans van Mierlo. He questioned the powers that be, criticising their inability to carry out self-cleansing. His party, however, ended up sharing in that same power he had set out to challenge so long ago.

The Netherlands got to know Van Mierlo as a pondering man in his mid-30s, walking down an Amsterdam canal, huddled in his raincoat. This is how he was portrayed in his first ad that appeared on black-and-white TVs around the country during the 1967 election campaign. Viewers saw his slightly weathered face and heard his warm voice say, with a light southern accent: "We were worried. About the political situation in our country. About the confusion and lack of transparency. About the waning influence of the electorate. About the inadequacy of the outdated political rules. "

He emerged on the stage at a time when Amsterdam was in turmoil. The countercultural movement that went by the name Provo defied the authorities on the streets. Teach-ins on social issues were a resounding success. Van Mierlo, a journalist with Algemeen Handelsblad (one of the two papers that later merged to become NRC Handelsblad) was part of the 'group of 13' that came together in the Dam Square Krasnapolsky hotel to organise the discontent.

With Van Mierlo as its leader, this group of 13 grew to 36. He later said he chaired it because, unlike the others, he could not come up with a good excuse not to. Others said he became its leader because it was evident he was the one who could get their message across. They were proven right when he founded the Democrats 66 political party and successfully participated in the parliamentary elections in 1967.

A landslide

Van Mierlo marched into parliament with seven seats. In those days, a debut like that was nothing less than a landslide. The established politicians considered the party an intruder in their system and demanded Van Mierlo take a side in the left-right spectrum of politics. "If I had a gun to my head," he admitted after long pressure, "I would choose Labour."

In 1973, his party joined a Labour-led coalition, but it also rid itself of Van Mierlo as its leader. He made a surprising comeback in politics as the minister of defence in 1981, in a cabinet that only lasted nine months. At the same time D66 languished. There was speculation as to whether it would collapse from bankruptcy or a lack of members.

Van Mierlo tried to revive it by writing a party manifesto of sorts: a document declaring the reason for its existence. It was received with great enthusiasm, but Van Mierlo was told that only he could implement it. And so, in 1986, 20 years after his political debut, he became the party's leader again.

The left-wing liberals gained momentum and doubled their seats in parliament from 12 to 24 in 1994. This meant D66 held the key to power. It was all but impossible for the major parties to form a coalition without it. This gave Van Mierlo the opportunity to bring together Labour and the right-wing liberal VVD to form a coalition without the CDA for the first time in modern Dutch history. The 'purple' coalition was born and succeeded in what Van Mierlo had set out to do: break the self-evident power of the Christian Democrats.

Walking conscience

In the purple government under prime minister Wim Kok, Van Mierlo took the position of foreign minister. He chose not to run for another term and retired from politics in 1998, becoming the walking conscience of D66. He was diagnosed with liver cancer in the autumn of his political career and underwent a transplant in 2000.

Van Mierlo's significance for Dutch politics goes far beyond the party for which he was the figurehead. Over the years, he only saw his diagnosis of the failing political system confirmed. The increasing focus on the individual and the development of the information society were further proof of his analysis that politics would become less about parties and more about the people leading them. The rise of Pim Fortuyn and now Geert Wilders only added further to his argument that politics would become all about individuals.