Early Sunday morning doubts...

It’s Sunday, 4.30 AM, the 12th of March 2017. The dog just woke me up, she’s nervous, the wind is howling around the house. Some strange irritating noise, like a big car engine that’s constantly running, makes me put on the radio to camouflage the sound. I just don’t want to go out looking for the reason, it must be a plastic bag catching the wind or some other kind of misplaced item. While the sound of the kettle whistle blows a high C, two slices of bread are launched from the toaster and our four-legged friend is scraping the kitchen floor with her metal food bowl, I’m deciding to have a second thought about posting my vote for the Dutch elections. If you are politically interested and search for information on the internet, one of the common consequences nowadays is that you suddenly receive emails from political parties. Your vote, as someone with a Dutch passport, seems to matter a lot for some of the wannabee leaders in command. It’s very strange to get an email, out here on the lonesome hill in central Portugal, from a party that doesn’t want any interference from Europe, wants to close all border for foreigners, explaining that everything I hear and see on the 8 o’clock news is secured by the extreme-left producers of the Dutch National TV and claims that all refugees are going to flood the country with a tsunami of crime, rape and murder. Yes, that’s called “spam” or “junk” and it’s getting unwanted in to my mailbox. It’s not my choice to receive that “information”, even more I am appalled that these racist and anti-democratic people, calling themselves a party for freedom, have access to my email address. That’s pretty scary to be hounest.

The Dutch gouvernment maneuvered itself into a diplomatic crisis with Turkey. They refused Turkish politicians to campaign in the Netherlands for the upcoming referendum where the people of that, once so beautiful, country can vote whether they want a dictatorship or not. Like for the Dutch politicians, the vote’s of people living abroad are important to and so they want to give a few speeches in all countries where men and women with a Turkish passport have immigrated to. The main reason, according to the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, is that they advocate an anti-democratic change of the Turkish constitution. In reality, and everybody with a bit of political interest knows this, it is to prevent Geert Wilders from getting even more votes, and for that most party’s act like the are as tough as the wannabe blond, white guy with his indonesian background and east-European wife. The Turkish people in the Netherlands could choose to go to a speech held by some representative of their gouvernment “back home”, or not. It’s a choice they can’t make now because the Dutch gouvernment doesn’t want disturbing interference in their national elections, considers (and rightfully so) that people living in the Netherlands are Dutch citizens and should not be influenced by politicians from their native country with whatever devious ideas. That’s all understandable from a gouvernmental point of view but it also reveals the fear of the Dutch politicians that all Turkish people would agree with the statements made by Erdogan while even in Turkey itself the people are divided by half and so at least 50 percent is fighting (voting) against this change in law. In the Netherlands they will never know how many citizens of Turkish origin are with or against the wannabee dictator, they weren’t given a change to protest against it. The only protest, by a small group of fanatics against the ban of Turkish politicians, was initiated by the Dutch gouvernment by taking away the freedom of speech and that gives a wrong impression of what most Turkish immigrants probably stand for.

On the other hand, the votes of Dutch people abroad are important enough to buy digital information about them, so political parties can send unwanted emails and targeted Facebook ads. What if the Portuguese gouvernment would prohibit a Dutch politician to speak for immigrants over here? They are the ones that try to convince people to vote for parties of which most are responsible for the inhuman decisions during the crisis of the last years, saving banks by forcing loans to southern European countries to pay those same banks, give international corporations access to their tax haven and made it possible, by forcing Portugal and other countries to privatize national companies which, when bought by some multinational, declare their profits in the Netherlands where they hardly pay any taxes, leaving southern gouvernments with a huge lost of income. Now, because I’m a EU citizen I can live in this wonderful country. Why does a Dutch, anti-European  political party think they can convince me of voting against my own interests? Ah, because they have a freedom of speech, no matter how racist or anti-democratic their message is. I’m a woodworker, a sawdust maker, so I know there are different ways to measure. Some use inches, some use centimeters but politicians well, they make up their own scales. It’s 7 AM by now, and I just poured a 5th cup of coffee. The envelope with my vote is still laying on the kitchen table. I guess I will be in doubt until it’s to late to send it in.....