The Prime Minister, already weakened after twelve years in power, would have erased messages linked to his function, in violation of the law known as “archives”.
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The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, should overcome this test, but the “Nokiagate” who agitates his country risks constituting an additional handicap for the head of government, in post for twelve years and in pain since the formation of Its fourth coalition, in January. The liberal manager was accused by the daily life of Volkskrant of having illegally erased from the texts received on his mobile phone, in violation of a law known as “archives”, which obliges managers to keep a trace of their exchanges, in particular to justify And explain the political choices they make. This legislation is also supposed to allow parliamentarians and journalists to be properly informed.
It is in particular on this basis that the daily life of Volkskrant recently brought an action against the Prime Minister. On May 16, the Landsadvocaat – an independent lawyer responsible for assisting public authorities in legal procedures – said that, for several years, Mr. Rutte had erased the messages received on his laptop. The latter, an old generation nokia, did not have sufficient memory to absorb more than twenty messages, argued Mr. Rutte. Two days later, wondering publicly why he had clung to “this stupid little device”, he appeared with a smartphone in hand, now claiming to try to “tinker” with new technology, testifying to “hell” .
During contact with the press, the Prime Minister denied any offense and specified that all the messages he deemed important had been transmitted to his colleagues or the administration. De Volkskrant would have received part of it, but the newspaper estimated them “not very credible”.
many questions
The Chamber of Deputies wanted to know more and summoned the head of government on May 18, against whom the Freedom Party (far right) of Geert Wilders had filed a motion of censorship supported by the radical left and other opposition parties. For once, for once, a severe mine, Mr. Rutte, his voice veiled, repeated that he had wanted nothing to hide and deplored that some elected officials see everything “in black and white”.
He has escaped a negative vote, without being able to dismiss the many questions that have flown over the past few years on his management: about the pandemic, the dubious granting of a public market for masks, of a (abandoned) project on the abolition of corporate dividends tax, the attempt to “placard” a competitor, or even about the “Allowance affair”, an administrative blunder which has unfairly penalized Thousands of families, wrongly accused of fraud.
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