Hope For AHA

The threat of Dutch Minister Rita Verdonk to revoke Ayaan Ali Hirsi's citizenship and passport isn't quite over yet. Dutch MPs are staging something of a revolt against her rapid decision. Zacht Ei has an interesting live blog of how the situation ran overnight-

Lousewies van der Laan, who leads the centrist D66 (Democrat 66) party, has announced she will file a motion which will, if it gets a majority, effectively force secretary Rita Verdonk to use her so-called 'discretionary powers' (i.e. a sort of executive privilege) to grant AHA a new Dutch passport, before the end of this week.

VVD chief whip Willibrord van Beek spoke some ambigous but subtly ominous words to a PBS journalist about Verdonk's political future. The Second Chamber is not pleased, to say the least. And although Verdonk may still survive this debate, she's dead in the water politically. Her main competitor in the VVD leadership tussle, Mark Rutte, is sitting back while he now soars in the polls.

Van Beek (VVD) files a motion asking Verdonk to reconsider her decision. It is supported by four other parties: CDA (right-centrist), PvdA (labour), D66 (centrist liberal) and GroenLinks (way too left).

Verdonk accepts the motion, meaning she will have to either revoke her earlier revocation of AHA's citizenship, or give her a new one pronto.

It looks like Verdonk may finally be realising what a huge mistake she made- one that a majority of Dutch MPs have forced her to back down from-

A majority of the political parties in parliament backed two motions on the issue. One calls on Verdonk to reconsider within six weeks whether Hirsi Ali is a Dutch citizen. The second instructs the Minister to grant Hirsi Ali accelerated naturalisation if she finds she is not a citizen of the Netherlands.

It looks like the only despicable, black-hearted dhimmi is the opportunistic Verdonk. My gratitude goes out to the Dutch MPs who have stood up to defend the heroic Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And it just may be that Verdonk is getting her just desserts-

"But it has done her more harm than good. Opinion polls conducted among VVD members shows support for former front-runner Verdonk has nosedived. And VVD MPs have made it clear they no longer see Verdonk as their future leader."

Cross posted at Cryptic Subterranean.