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2/28/11

Dutch Government's Future at Stake in Provincial Polls This Week

The future of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's minority coalition may be in doubt if he and his Freedom Party supporters fail to win a majority in the upper house of parliament through provincial elections this week.

Rutte's government of Liberals and Christian Democrats relies on an agreement with Geert Wilders's anti-Islam Freedom Party for its majority in the lower chamber. The coalition has lacked one in the upper house in The Hague since taking office in October and needs to gain control to ensure it can push through planned legislation including budget cuts.

"This Cabinet is ideologically finished if it doesn't get a majority in the upper house," Andre Krouwel, who teaches political science at VU University in Amsterdam, said in a telephone interview. "Although it can depend on its lower-house majority, it will be paralyzed, and that makes it uninteresting for the Freedom Party to back it.

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