The smear no longer works. Calling Geert Wilders a 'far rightist" is of a piece with the British press denouncing Winston Churchill prior to World War 2 (which they did). The Dutch have had enough, and Wilders party doubled the number of seats it holds in the Dutch Parliament to 24. It is now the third largest party in Parliament.
The Prime Minister resigned when his party lost half its seats in the last election.
The spectacular election breakthrough of the far-right anti-Muslim Party for Freedom shocked the Netherlands on Thursday as two mainstream parties braced for weeks of coalition haggling.
The pro-business Liberal VVD party had 31 seats and the Labour party (PvdA) 30, with 98 percent of the vote counted. But far-right PVV leader Geert Wilders demanded a share of government after his party came third with 24, more than doubling its seats in the 150 member parliament.
"Nobody in The Hague can bypass the PVV anymore," said Wilders, whose party wants an end to immigration from Muslim countries and a ban on new mosques and the Koran.
"We want to be part of the new government," declared Wilders, a distinctive figure with his shock of dyed blonde hair who has to live at secret addresses because of his controversial political stand.
"The impossible has happened," he told a party gathering, hailing the PVV as "the biggest winner" of the election. "The Netherlands chose more security, less crime, less immigration and less Islam."
The Christian Democratic Action party of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende was pushed into fourth place and he resigned as party leader and from his parliamentary seat after eight years as Dutch premier.
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