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"The Christian Democrats rule out Geert Wilders as potential partner,” headlines Trouw a week ahead of the 9 June general elections. The leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party, incumbent PM Jan Peter Balkenende, says he’d rather form a coalition “government of reform” with VVD liberals, D66 Democrats and GroenLinks Greens. Geert Wilders’ populist Islamophobic PVV refuse to raise the retirement age (currently 65) and could well “damage the Netherlands’ image abroad”, while the PvdA Labour party are not prepared, according to Balkenende, "to reduce the duration of unemployment benefits”. Trouw notes that it “quite unusual” for the incumbent chief executive to announce his coalition preferences before the election: the strategy is to draw moderate voters anxious about the rise of the PVV. According to the latest polls, the VVD are likely to come out well on top (37 out of 150 seats), followed by the PvdA (28), CDA (25) and PVV (17).
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