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AMSTERDAM: Geert Wilders’s far-right, anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) has won most seats in the Dutch parliamentary elections, with 98 percent of votes counted.
With 98% of the votes counted, his Freedom Party (PVV) won 37 seats out of 150, well ahead of 25 for a joint Labour/Green ticket and 24 for the conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
“We will have to find ways to live up to the hopes of our voters, to put the Dutch back as number one”, Wilders said in his first response, adding that “the Netherlands will be returned to the Dutch, the asylum tsunami and migration will be curbed.”
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Wilders was convicted for discrimination against Moroccans after leading a chant at a campaign rally in 2014, when he asked the crowd whether they wanted more, or fewer Moroccans. After supporters chanted “Fewer!” he answered: “We’re going to take care of that.”
Wilders’ inflammatory views on Islam have prompted death threats and he has lived under heavy police protection for years. He has called the prophet Mohammad a “paedophile”, Islam a “fascist ideology” and “backward religion”, and wants to ban mosques and Quran, the Muslim holy book, in the Netherlands.
His comments have led to sometimes violent protests in nations with large Muslim populations, including Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt. In Pakistan, a religious leader issued a fatwa against him.
