Heavy Turnout In Dutch Election
The Dutch turned out in droves on Wednesday to vote in a general election, with the opposition Christian Democrats and the party of murdered anti-immigration populist Pim Fortuyn set to rout the center-left government.
Voting across the country was brisk despite a brief suspension of campaigning after of the murder last week of Fortuyn, a controversial, gay political maverick who had captured the imagination of growing numbers of Dutch voters.
The top-selling daily De Telegraaf said massive turnout was expected in what it described as "one of the most bizarre and unpredictable elections our country has seen."
Fortuyn, 54, was shot dead on May 6 as he emerged from a radio station near Amsterdam. An animal rights activist has been charged with the killing which stunned the nation and provoked an unprecedented outpouring of grief and anger.
Fortuyn's party, the Pim Fortuyn List (LPF), was formed only three months ago.
"A lot of people are voting because of Fortuyn, but I hope not too many people will vote emotionally," Juliette Van der Drift, an Amsterdam Web site designer, said after voting in the centre of the cosmopolitan capital.
The expected demise of Prime Minister Wim Kok's left-leaning coalition after eight years in office would be the latest in a string of defeats for Europe's left that began in Italy last year and has spread to France, Denmark and Portugal.
Fortuyn, whose attacks on Islam and opposition to immigration raised eyebrows in a country with a sizeable Muslim and immigrant community, rejected comparisons with prominent European far-right leaders like France's Jean-Marie Le Pen and Austria's Joerg Haider.
His party of untried political novices has accused mainstream parties of inciting hatred of the former sociology professor by demonising him as a right-wing extremist and is expected to win a sizeable sympathy vote.
The LPF remains leaderless.
The country's 10,000 polling stations opened their doors at 7:30 a.m. , with voting continuing until 9 p.m. (1 p.m. EDT). Some 12.5 million people are eligible to vote to choose 150 members of parliament.
Polls predict the conservative Christian Democrats (CDA) will win the biggest share of the vote, putting it on course to lead a new coalition. The fledgling LPF could emerge as the second force in the country.
Both are tipped as potential coalition partners although the political horse trading which follows a Dutch election could produce a combination of several parties in government. The Netherlands has been ruled by coalitions for decades.
Around 90 percent of votes were likely to be cast electronically in polling stations. Some 26,000 postal votes from Dutch citizens abroad must also be counted.
The first exit poll was expected immediately after polling stations close and a provisional result was due around 2200 GMT.
Polls suggest the vote for Kok's Labour Party (PvdA) could be almost halved from its 1998 vote total of 29 percent, while its partners, the free-market VVD and centrist D66 were also expected to lose support.
A poll issued late on Tuesday put the CDA's support at 23.1 percent and Fortuyn's party at 16 percent.
That would mean the two parties would need a third coalition partner. The VVD is seen as the most likely candidate. As coalition negotiations usually take months, it could be some time before a new government emerges.
Wim Kok, whose government has been ruling in a caretaker capacity since it resigned last month over a damning report on a botched Dutch peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in 1995, appealed for the Dutch to vote with their heads not their hearts.
By Paul Gallagher