Amazingly, Mrs. Verdonk (Immigration Minister of the Netherlands) managed to provoke yet another crisis in Dutch politics. Her questionable behavior in the case Ayaan Hirshi Ali brought down the ruling Cabinet a few months ago, and forced new elections in November. Today she ignored a vote of no confidence by parliament, a first in the constitutional history of the Netherlands.
Her party did -deservedly- rather bad at the recent elections and she is now a 'lame duck' minister, taking care of business while a new government is being formed. This can take a few months, as in the Netherlands governments are created by forming a coalition of two or three political parties.
The newly elected parliament asked Mrs. Verdonk's to postpone the extradition of a group of 26,000 asylum seekers to allow the new cabinet to decide on them. She refused, even after two formal requests by parliament and as a result the parliament issued a vote of no-confidence. In normal situations that would be sufficient to force a minister to resign.
However, her political party the VVD announced that it would retract support for the entire government if she was forced to leave. This would have left a strange void, as the cabinet strictly speaking already had resigned. As NRC, a Dutch newspaper put it: "it's frightening that the situation is more tough than the politicians are who dealing with it".
Mr. Balkenende, who has been leading a series of disastrous cabinets, was apparently in favor of Mrs. Verdonk resigning but at the end she stayed on as member of the Cabinet. She did have to give up her position as Immigration Minister, and the deportations will be temporarily halted.
The unrest in the VVD party, the Dutch free-market conservatives, must be considerable. It's interesting that the support Mrs. Verdonk received today from the party's number 1 came after she tried to unsettle him from his position a few weeks ago when she had received more votes than he did in the general elections.
All in all, this affair leaves a bitter taste for many people, not in the least of course by the asylum seekers, some of which have been in legal procedures for over 10 years. It will not make it any easier to form a new government either.
Tuesday evening we had the holiday party of my work.
This weekend I baked bread 
Today I brought Sinterklaas candy and cookies to work.
My parents store our old belongings on the attic of their house, and when I was in the Netherlands I spend an afternoon going through them. I found a lot of the books that I had really missed in the last 2 years.
Last week the book case from Ikea arrived. 