The Netherlands’ own ‘Assange’ - the US want Twitter details of Dutch hacker. Police chiefs under fire again for being stubborn.  Political veteran sets up a new party for the elderly. Young Dutch-Turks tell us whether we should be worried about them.  Romantic television series more popular than ever - but why?

Dutch Assange: nothing spectacular on my Twitter account
The Netherlands has got its very own Julian Assange it seems. Trouw dedicates a page to Wikileaks after the news broke yesterday that the US is demanding that Twitter release the details of hacker Rop Gonggrijp.  Mr Gonggrijp says there’s nothing spectacular on his Twitter account and the data will not reveal anything new.

Mr Gonggrijp also denies being Mr Assange’s deputy. He says De Telegraaf’s claim yesterday that he went door to door, with a million euros in his pocket, visiting webhosting companies, asking them to host Wikileaks data is incorrect.

But he is a hacker. He believes his involvement in the distribution of the ‘Collateral Murder’ video, which shows the shooting from a US helicopter in Iraq of a Reuters’ photographer and around 12 civilians who went to his aid, is behind the US court order calling on Twitter to surrender the information.

In 1995 he said in Trouw “I have never been a particularly good hacker. It’s about the ideas behind it: free access to information for everyone.” But the man who supports openness does not want journalists on his doorstep. Any who do turn up can expect to be put on his personal ‘black list’.

Dutch police chiefs under fire again
Populist and popular broadsheet De Telegraaf criticises the stubbornness of the leadership of the country’s police forces. It reports that police chiefs are resisting Security Minister Ivo Opstelten’s instructions to put an end to parking ticket quotas. One police chief Arno Brok - also a member of Mr Opstelten’s VVD party and as such also serving as a mayor - says fines are important to road safety and combating illegal parking in neighbourhoods. Police officers are expected to write a certain number of tickets to meet their own individual quota. If they don’t they may be asked to explain why.

The Socialist Party (SP) is flabbergasted and wants an explanation from the minister why he has not got a grip on 'his' police forces. SP parliamentarian Ronald van Raak says, “Police forces are headed by police managers who are too stubborn, like Welten, who want to play the boss.” (Last week Amsterdam police chief Bernard Welten said he wouldn’t be an instrument of the government.)

Meanwhile AD reports that police statistics are misleading. The unions believe the falling crime figures announced during many a New Year’s reception are due to the failure of a new computer system. The new system, which has been much criticised, has led to fewer crimes being recorded. It crashes so often, it appears, that police officers store data on local computers, but don’t get round to entering data on the centralised system. All in all, a police officer’s lot is not a happy one, it seems.

Political veteran sets up new party for the elderly
A new political party has been set up.  50Plus is the name and it’s meant to be a “respectable alternative” to Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party reports de Volkskrant. Veteran politician Jan Nagel is behind the new movement. It is not the first time he has set up a party. He was one of the forces behind the local Leefbaar (which roughly translates as ‘liveable’) parties, which eventually produced a national Leefbaar Nederland (LN) party, led for a brief period by the late Pim Fortuyn  - before he started up his own party.

In a certain sense LN was the forerunner of populist parties Pim Fortuyn’s List, Rita Verdonk’s Proud of the Netherlands and, of course, the Freedom Party.

It is the Freedom Party that Mr Nagel now wants to challenge, because he feels that its leader Geert Wilders has let the elderly down. “Before the elections, he had one policy that was not up for discussion: no increase in the retirement age. That promise turned out to have a life span of just eight hours... ”

But if that is true, why is the Freedom Party still so popular?  Well, many voters dislike The Hague’s political elite even more.

Like the Freedom Party, the new 50Plus party has been set up with an eye on the opinion polls. Even the name was chosen after market research showed it was the most popular. Apparently 50 percent of people over 50 said they would vote for a party for the elderly.

Potentially that is eight or nine parliamentary seats and about four in parliament’s Upper House, which could give the party a key bargaining position to gain concessions from the current minority government. But parties come and go at almost every election, so it remains to be seen whether the youngest Dutch party is here to stay.

Should we be worried about young Dutch-Turks? 
In a letter to de Volkskrant yesterday, ten Dutch-Turkish leaders presented a ‘manifesto’ in which they warn that the situation of young people in the Netherlands’ ethnic Turkish community is worrying. In today’s edition three young upwardly mobile Dutch-Turks tell their stories.

The manifesto writers say young Turks are fast becoming socially isolated, have psychiatric problems or are becoming radicalised. Unable to find work experience placements to complete their education or unable to find work, many second generation Turks are less well integrated into Dutch society than the previous generation – those who  came to the Netherlands to find work in the 1960s and 1970s.

The three young people interviewed by de Volkskrant say they recognise the things mentioned in the manifesto. Student Fatma Okay says there is so much pressure on her from her family that she’s hardly opened a book to revise for her upcoming exams. But she doesn’t feel like an outsider in the Netherlands, on the contrary, she’s doing an international course with students from all over the world. She feels like a world citizen.

However, young professionals Ahmet Cimtay and Züleyha Azman both wonder whether the job application rejections they’ve received have had anything to do with their ‘foreign’ names. Ahmet feels that when you are a Muslim, people always think you are not moderate and therefore dangerous.

Züleyha finally managed to get a job by offering to do an internship first. However, she is bothered by the idea that politicians do not see her as being Dutch just because she holds dual nationality. In the end, she doesn’t really want to be a spokesperson for any particular group. “I am Züleyha, an individual.”

Romantic TV series more popular than ever
Matchmaker series Farmer Seeks Wife (Boer Zoekt Vrouw) is back on the TV and is more popular than ever, according to AD. Viewing figures exceeded four and a half million (Netherlands’ population is close to 17 million) towards the end of last Sunday’s edition – just after farmer Marcel paraded round in his boxer shorts. Last year, viewing figures reached record levels during the final programme when the farmers chose their potential true love from three candidates.

Media expert René van Dammen has a rather bland explanation for the programme’s spectacular popularity right now: “People watch television en masse in January and February.”

De Telegraaf puts the popularity of the programme down to “positive television” in these harsh times of rough and ready reality TV. But maybe it’s just that we are all a bunch of old-fashioned romantics.

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