Howling with the elderly

The rise of new political party 50PLUS has launched politician Jan Nagel to success, but is the party's success based on real concerns or imagined threats to the elderly? JOEP DERKSEN investigates.

After the rise and fall of Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV),  a new one-issue party is gaining momentum. And this time it is the elderly who unite behind their front runner Henk Krol, leader of the newly formed 50PLUS. Having been accustomed to decades of pampering with tax reliefs and subsidies, these elderly are not used to giving something back to society. And 50PLUS eagerly gives a voice to these emotions; in February their potential parliamentary seats rose from the current two to no less than 13.

As a PvdA politician in 1975, the founding father of 50PLUS, Jan Nagel, called the Berlin Wall "historically correct" (Volkskrant, 27 September 1975). After a dispute within the PvdA, he left this party and set up the local party Leefbaar Hilversum in 1993. In 2001 he created Leefbaar Nederland and reeled in Pim Fortuyn. But Fortuyn soon abandoned that party to set up his own Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF), leaving Leefbaar Nederland behind. That party was later dissolved.

In 2005, Nagel set up the Party for Justice, Decisiveness and Progress (Partij voor Rechtvaardigheid, Daadkracht en Vooruitgang), but failed to gain enough seats in parliament. He then had more success in 2011 with another new party 50PLUS and now it looks like he has struck political gold. Nagel soon found another prospector, Henk Krol, who before fought for the civil rights of the Netherlands' gay community. As a journalist, he founded the magazine Gay Krant, but also acted as a spokesperson for the VVD. He too apparently acknowledged the benefits of appealing to the concerns of the aged about the upcoming cutbacks and eagerly accepted the position of front runner for 50PLUS.

"The young generations have to show their solidarity to the elderly." It is a commonly used phrase to make sure that all pensions are continued to be paid out to anybody reaching the age of 65. Of course, in the current economic crisis everybody has to suffer the consequences of the bank failures and the South European country bailouts. However, according to 50PLUS, the elderly should not be part of this new type of solidarity. This point of view has found solid ground in the grey community and is another success for Nagel and Krol.

More than 3,000 people voiced their concern on a website regarding cutbacks from the national government. It did not take too long before Krol had gathered dozens of television cameras. "Pensions go down and costs go up, such as the private contribution for the health expenses. Also, since 2004 the elderly did not have an inflation correction for many years," Krol complained. However, PvdA leader Diederik Samsom said that nowadays the elderly are the richest group of people in the country. Together, they own 30 percent to 40 percent of the population's total wealth. "I don’t want to take away the money from the young generation, that’s why we need a small cutback in the pensions," Samsom said at a Libelle forum.

Hundreds of thousands of people who bought their house between 1980 and 2008 have seen the value of their property multiply a dozen times. Most of them have paid off their mortgage and in the coming years they may have to go down a few percent. On the other hand, the 30- and 40-year old couples with young children have to work. Both of them; not out of luxury, but because otherwise they cannot pay their bills or fulfill the mortgage payments.

So, what do the statistics say? Nine out of 10 elderly people do not just have the AOW (pension), but receive additional insurance benefits as well. In total, 649,000 households (around 40 percent of all elderly) own over 200,000 euro individually and 12 percent possess more than 500,000 euro. Most shockingly: only 0.033 percent of elderly households are keepers of not less than 31 percent of the combined fortune of the elderly: 131 out of 419 billion euro, as reported by de Volkskrant in February.

(Verschenen in The Holland Times, maart 2013)