A majority of the Dutch think Princess Máxima’s father should be present at her husband Crown Prince Willem-Alexander’s coronation, a survey suggests.

Fifty-six percent of those surveyed are in favour and 38 percent against Jorge Zorreguieta’s attendance. Mr Zorreguieta was deputy agriculture minister under Argentina’s Videla dictatorship in the late 1970s, when thousands of people were tortured and killed during the country’s Dirty War.

Labour, the Socialist Party and the Green Left party do not want Mr Zorreguieta to attend the ceremony. A debate on the matter, sixty percent of those surveyed say, only needs to be held in the run-up to the coronation. It is widely thought that Queen Beatrix will abdicate in favour of her son within the next few years.

Among people who in the 2010 elections voted for the Freedom Party, 55 percent look favourably on Mr Zorreguieta’s precence. Among pro-business VVD voters, 65 percent are in favour, among Christian Democrats 63 percent, among Democrats 66 voters 49 percent, among Labour voters 43 percent, among Socialist Party voters 51 percent and among Green Left voters 35 percent, according to the opinion poll.

Mr Zorreguieta was not allowed to attend his daughter’s wedding in Amsterdam in 2002. Though he has officially been reported to the Dutch police, the government allows him to make regular private visits to the Netherlands. In Thursday’s parliamentary debate opposition MPs called on the government to make it plain Mr Zorreguieta was not welcome at the coronation.

On Friday newspaper de Volkskrant quoted an academic who opposes Mr Zorreguieta’s presense as saying: “I don’t see how someone who must have known about the human rights abuses and who doesn’t clearly renounce them or show remorse can sit on the front row during a coronation.”

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