Pieter Omtzigt

Pieter Omtzigt   (Politician, author, economist)
Born	8 January 1974 The Hague, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Alma mater	University of Exeter, European University Institute
Interests	• Malta • Corruption • Fraud • Mark Rutte
Party	Christian Democratic Appeal
Number 2 of the Dutch Christian Democratic party during the 2020s as representative. Exposed a lot of corruption in government. Targeted by Mark Rutte to be removed in secret leaked documents.  Netherlands/Member of the House of Representatives In office 2003 - Present

Pieter Omtzigt is a Dutch politician for the Christian Democratic Appeal or CDA party since 2003, being the parliamentary leader as party leader Wopke Hoekstra is Dutch Minister of Finance. During the 2010s Omzigt became a vocal opponent of Mark Rutte which his party is in a coalition with since 2017, being the target of a conspiracy to remove him in 2021 and irregularities in the CDA party election he lost very narrowly.

Early Career

Omzigt studied economics and statistics at the University of Exeter from 1992 to 1996. In 2002, Omzigt became a doctoral researcher for the department of quantitative economics at the University of Amsterdam. Omzigt promoted in econometrics at the European University Institute in Florence in 2003. In 2003, Omzigt was moved up the ranks as Jan Peter Balkenende was chosen to lead a new coalition as PM, and became a representative for the Christian Democratic Appeal party.

Parliament

First term

Omzigt quickly became quite a vocal and staunch defender of human rights. Omzigt noticeably became a defender of pensions for the elderly and was a vocal opponent of the idea of deep politicians in Europe to couple social security to child benefits as the wave of new immigrants would gladly try to use them, so that economies wouldn't collapse as a result of the aging workforce.

“The French have been utilizing population policies for centuries. And they still think that they lost the Franco-Prussian War because they didn't have enough soldiers to send to the frontlines. And that's why I don't want to implement any form of populace policy.”
Pieter Omtzigt (27 November 2004) 

IGOs

During Omzigt's first term, he became a member of the Parlemntairy Assemble of the Council of Europe and the West-European Union and Vice-president of the monitoring committee for human rights of Christians in the middle-east. In the Council of Europe, he pressured and succeeded in brokering a new agreement that made it mandatory for banks to share information to foreign countries to combat money laundering, following his reports on Switzerland and Luxembourg (this late one caused quite a stir as half of Dutch TV is de facto located there for tax purposes).

MH-17

Omzigt resigned from being a spokesperson for his party regarding the MH-17 dossier after an incident allowing a false Ukrainian witness to speak in a meeting. Omzigt was suspected to be one of the few coalition members to have doubts in the official narrative regarding MH 17.

Second term

Omzigt was again not directly elected but chosen as a replacement of the new coalition members of the first Mark Rutte coalition. Notable actions include requesting international police laws for registered pedophile clubs, pressured Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal to pressure Turkey to stop confiscating and bulldozing monasteries and more.

President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and Eurocomissionary Michel Barnier would later clash with Omzigt about his refusal to mess with people's pensions, as Van Rompuy opted since the 2000s to force EU-countries to alter the pensions of their citizens.

Third Term

Omzigt was the only member of this party to be elected with preferential votes in 2012, as his position chosen by the party-chairpersons - again - wasn't close to the expected seats his party would get in the elections, as they chose to remove him initially from the party list, seemingly a weird choice for the man in so many EU-commissions.

Notable activities during his term included an investigation of whether and which Dutch nationals are still receiving pensions for serving for the German military apparatus (the answer is 27), starting a movement to stop the Ankara Agreement, in particular, the section that allows Turkish nationals to keep their Turkish passport and not having to obtain a Dutch passport. This wish was granted in 2020. Omzigt became the assigned reporter for Daphne Caruana Galizia, where he developed an interest in Malta, calling it a deeply corrupt and dangerous country with their assassinations, money laundering, and golden passports. Omzigt enjoyed round-the-clock security in Malta following his publication on the hitmen connected to Maltese politicians.

During the end of his term, Omzigt became a vital investigator for the Dutch Child Benefits Affair, which led to the fall of the third coalition of Mark Rutte in 2021. Omzigt became noted for uncovering Mark Rutte's "leadership style", which had its own name in texts between civil servants and Rutte, where need-to-know, plausible deniability, and plan cover-ups had become rampant.

“There's a wider agenda underneath this. I wish it was only one tax officer, it was that one or that one, or that minister. That's why I've said for over 4 years, I don't care if you resign. Why? It isn't one person, we created a system and government that doesn't put the people in the first place, only during election campaigns.".”
Pieter Omtzigt (19 January 2021) 

In a continuation of Rutte's early policies, Rutte's third cabinet fell in 2021 over the conclusions of the parliamentary inquiry over the social benefits policies set out by Rutte in the early 2010s. Rutte after being convicted of violating the constitution reimplemented his policies at the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration, which included "targeting" citizens of the basis of race and background accusing them wrongly of fraud, fining them for thousands of Euros without any investigation with up to 26.000 parents involved. When the parliamentary inquiry concluded Mark Rutte's three cabinets had violated "institutional rights" of citizens, the day after resigning, the Dutch parliament received a report back that simply stated multiple times "for answer on question 4, see question 8" at which question 8 pointed back to question 3. Following the benefits scandal, Rutte was personally charged by 80 parents for 3 acts of prosecutorial malfeasance. Omtzigt called all branches of government corrupt including the media, linking them to an intimate gang, sketching an Operation Mockingbird-like society, noticing "whenever I ask a question in this coalition, I become the problem".

Omzigt noted other cover-ups in the affair, including the civil servant who turned whistleblower being fired and the General Data Protection Regulation being used by the government to request data about tenants, share them with every private entity they deemed could get some tax benefits back to them, and after 20000 of families were already or on the brink of being declared bankrupt, Mark Rutte and his secretaries at the ministry personally visited the Tax and Customs administrations, pressuring for maintaining the same ruthless line, while tryng to form a plan how to keep the government for resigning in June 2019, one year before the parliamentary inquiry. Something Rutte failed to explain in parliament.

“Long I've objected comparing Malta and the Netherlands. But here something else is not functioning. That is power and opposing power. There is such an intimate connection between the coalition and parliament, between the parliament and the media, between the parliament and the justice system. If you ask difficult questions, you become the problem. There is something wrong with the checks and balances. And it goes further. The criminal justice system doesn't work anymore. All the NGOs that hog the government's money, all don't work anymore. Know what happens nowadays? They don't dare to speak, because the government will kill their subsidy. We've organized or system so precisely that that our flock of politicians values the party-chairman more than the electorate.”
Pieter Omtzigt (19 January 2021) 

Party Election

Omzigt, State Secretary for Economic Affairs and Climate Mona Keijzer, Dutch Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport & Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Hugo de Jonge campaigned for the position of party leader in the upcoming election in 2021. In the final round of voting at the party congress, although Keijzer urged her voters to vote for de Jonge, Omzigt lost 49,3 to 50,7%. After the result multiple voters voiced their suspicions something in the voting process went wrong as the system processed their votes for Omzigt as a vote for de Jonge. Although Keijzer also voices her concerns, even after de Jonge stepped down a few months later due to not being able to combine to COVID-19/Pandemic with the job, Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra was elected leader instead.

2021 Election

Following the 2021 Dutch General election, one of the chosen scouts to form a new coalition, second Dutch Deputy Prime Minister & Dutch Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Kajsa Ollongren was photographed in The Hague after the press received a notice she was tested positive with Covid-19. Ollongren was discovered to hold all the briefing notes from her and the second scout Annemarie Jorritsma their meetings with all elected parties in the new Dutch House of Represenatatives in her arm, without a book cover facing the press.

The notes included many never-before-seen passages, including a sentence literally translated to "Position Omzigt, function elsewhere", implying if the CDA party was to be part of a new coalition, Omzigt was to be disposed of elsewhere, perhaps outside The Hague. Ollogren, Rutte, Hoekstra, Jorritma denied having talked about Omzigt personally or ordered to note him in the documents for the scouts, as it would imply the coalition trying to eliminate critical MPs of other parties behind their back.

Just before the debate between 17 political parties in Dutch parliament, requesting who named Omzigt, the secret documents requested by the civil servants who handwrote it, revealed Mark Rutte himself remarked "You have to do something with Omzigt", mentioning him a further 17 times. Rutte escaped a vote of no-confidence by 3 votes after a debate of 11 hours, where the source who had informed Rutte the morning before was also not revealed, while he remarked having no "active memory" of any talks mentioning Omzigt.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.