Comedy show in Dutch Parliament by Government Coalition on purchase Lockheed F-35 avoids crises
The discussion on buying two JSF test planes brought the Dutch governing coalition - the Christian Democrats, the Labor Party and the Christian Union - close to crisis this week after the Labour MPs said they would not agree to buy the controversial Lockheed F-35 fighter aircraft. Following a variety of intense meetings between the partners in the coalition a compromise was reached whereby it was decided to put a non-refundable down payment on the purchase of one JSF operational test aircraft and to delay a final decision on whether or not to buy that single aircraft until next year and to move the final decision to purchase 85 of the F35 Joint Strike Aircraft to 2012, one year after the next general elections.
Buying one JSF test plane would cost the Netherlands 113.2 million euros, but financing one would still be around 100 million euros. Opposition parties considered this a complete "turn-around" by the Labor party and a "comical" performance by the whole government coalition, whereby nothing has changed except that the verb purchasing was changed into the verb financing. They noted that financing the test plane comes down to the same thing as buying it. Opting out of the test phase at a later stage will cost the Netherlands between 20 and 100 million euros, according to insiders.
The bottom-line is that the Government coalition probably realized that if the confrontation had resulted in early elections, the populist conservative hardliner, Mr. Geert Wilders, chairman of the Party for Freedom (PVV) probably would have been the next PM of the Netherlands. Consequently the F-35 Joint Strike drama will continue in the Netherlands.
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