Cycles And Fluctuations

This month’s topic of the IndieWeb Carnival is “cycles and fluctuations”. This is my third time participating in this initiative, and I think this topic couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m not one hundred percent sure where this is going, but I want to start with politics.

Politics, just like fashion - yes, I made that comparison -, are made of cycles and fluctuations. Certain topics come and go. Then they come back again and go away again.

In normal circumstances, the Netherlands elects a new government every four years. However, fluctuations may happen, and have happened. As a consequence, new elections have been held last week.

Today marks the beginning of the negotiations to form a new government. If they succeed, we will enter a new cycle with a new government. The winners want these negotiations to go relatively fast and be done by Christmas. However, the differences between the different parties to get a majority into a coalition are quite big.

Many parties have already indicated to not want to work with the far right. Seems good to me. Yet, the polarization of the past years still shows repercussions: some usually more center right parties lean a bit more to the right than before, while some center left parties lean a bit more to the left. I just hope they find a middle ground.

Just like everything else in life, politics (in some countries) is about concessions in order to be able to work with each other. What’s more important: the differences between the parties, or making sure that the country has a stable government for the next cycle?