THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Mark Rutte became the longest-serving Dutch prime minister Tuesday, and the leader known to some as “Teflon Mark” because scandals don’t stick to him shows no signs of slowing down despite the unrest that grips his nation. and his party’s popularity sliding in the polls.
Rutte has been in charge for 4,311 days, or almost 13 years, since becoming prime minister in October 2010.
“It’s the greatest job in the world, an incredible honor. I have to say that there are a lot of puzzles on my desk right now, but these things happen,” Rutte said late last month as Dutch politics entered its summer break.
Chief among those puzzles is the government’s aim to reduce nitrogen pollution that has sparked angry protests by farmers who have caused traffic chaos in recent weeks by blocking roads and highways with tractors, dumping waste such as manure and asbestos on the roads and setting hay bales on fire.
Rutte, 55, leader of the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, or VVD, and head of a four-party ruling coalition, said he had no plans to celebrate becoming the longest-serving prime minister, which he called “a footnote”, and said he would not be in the country that day. Although his party has been declining in recent polls, it remains the largest in the fragmented Dutch political landscape.
This fragmentation helped Rutte rise to power and is part of the reason he has stayed in office for so long — he is now leading his fourth coalition government — said political scientist André Krouwel of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
He said Rutte won a power struggle within his own party at a time when the traditional forces of Dutch politics — Christian Democrats and Social Democrats — were in decline and have remained so.
“He basically became prime minister by default because of the failure of others, not because of his own achievements, just because others collapsed more than the VVD,” Krouwel said in a telephone interview.
This has helped Rutte retain the top job in Dutch politics despite damaging crises during his dozen years in office, notably a scandal in which thousands of young families are left in debt and desperate after being wrongly accused of child benefit fraud. Rutte’s third coalition resigned due to the scandal. But he recovered to lead the VVD to victory in a general election weeks later in March 2021.
He is seen in some quarters as too shrewd and has been accused in parliament of lying to lawmakers, but at the same time he is seen as an efficient leader who can get things done, Krouwel said.
“Those two elements … – and I think both are true – make him, I think, a tough player to beat,” he said.
He has now eclipsed the previous record of 4,310 days in office set by Ruud Lubbers, a Christian Democrat who led the Netherlands from 4 November 1982 to 22 August 1994. Rutte is the second elected leader which has occupied the country longer. European Union of 27 nations, only behind the Hungarian Viktor Orban.
Rutte has co-opted parties from across the political spectrum into his four coalitions ranging from a minority coalition that was bolstered by the support of anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders who took office on October 14, 2010, to his current four-party administration. .
As one of the EU’s longest-serving leaders, Rutte is seen as a behind-the-scenes mediator at leaders’ summits in Brussels, but he has also long had a strained relationship with leaders in the south and east Europe who see him as the figurehead of a group of “frugal” nations that insist on strict budget rules.
Rutte has faced many crises during his time in charge, ranging from the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine that killed all 298 people on board, many of them from Dutch nationality, until the COVID-19 pandemic.
And he’s not ready to stop just yet.
“For me, the deciding factor is: do I have the ideas, the energy? Does my mouth water on Friday morning when the Cabinet starts to sort out the issues? As long as I have that, I would like to continue,” he said.
