And the Dutch just keep on voting! Well... that is, those that were still motivated for the tihrd election in a year. After the local and the national elections, we had the election for the provincial government on March 7. The province is our regional government layer. It is the weakest and least known of the three government layers. So a lot of people actually had no idea what they should vote for and they stayed at home. Only 46% of those allowed to vote did so, which is much lower than in most local and national election (in which 70 to 80% votes). And since the last (national) vote was only 3 months ago and the new government had just been installed one week before, the result was quite predictable: more or less the same as on November 22.

Did I vote? Yes of course, I always use this great democratic right! But apparently about half  of Dutch voters does not see the use of provincial  elections. The provinces do useful things and are important for the daily life of all their inhabitants. But somehow they almost manage to make their contirbution to Dutch society invisible. And I cannot say the political parties tried very hard to make the provinces more 'sexy', probably they were a bit tired of all campaigning they already did for the local elections in March and the national ones in November.

Now, it's back to business. What will the new Dutch government actually do the next four years? We will know after about 100 days; this is the time the new ministers have granted themselves to develop new policies. They plan to travel across the country and talk to many people to hear what policies are needed...Let's hope after that, they will be able to take decisions. Listening to your citizens sounds great, but it's only a small part of making sensible policies.