Amsterdam Mayor New Labor Party Chief a Popular Move

AMSTERDAM—Amsterdam’s mayor took over as leader of the Labor Party last week, boosting his party into the lead in the latest pre-election polls.

The top job with the Labor Party (PVDA) became vacant when Job Cohen’s predecessor, Wouter Bos, stepped down on Friday citing a desire to spend more time with his wife and three children. Bos had also served as the country’s finance minister.

Bos’s announcement came one month after the Dutch government collapsed when the Labor Party quit the governing coalition over a failure to come to an agreement about the Netherlands’s military presence in Afghanistan. The collapse triggered national elections to be held in June.

The bump in the polls gives Labor the lead with 27 seats, compared to 24 before the leadership change, according to a survey by pollster Maurice the Hond. Second place is now held by the right-wing Party of Freedom (PVV) with 26 seats, followed by the Christian Democrats with 25 seats.

Cohen’s appointment as leader of the Labor Party, who is seen as more left-wing than his predecessor, has drawn support away from the other left wing parties such as the Socialist Party, resulting in increased polarization between left and right in the Netherlands; especially over the issue of immigration, which has dominated Dutch politics for the last few years, the difference is large.

While Cohen is known for his moderate approach toward Muslim integration in the Netherlands, his right-wing opponent, Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party, is known for taking a hard-line assimilation stance on integrating Muslim immigrants into Dutch society.

On Friday Wilders told Dutch media that Cohen is the country’s biggest “multicultural coddler.”

Cohen, having served as mayor of Amsterdam for the past nine years, has received praise on the one hand for building cultural bridges, but critics have frequently blamed him for being too soft and using an approach of ’talking and drinking tea.’

When Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was killed on the street in Amsterdam by a young Dutch Muslim of Moroccan decent in 2004, Cohen was praised for being able to hold the city together by some, and attacked for being soft in his approach by others.