The institutions started a lobby and, among other things, started a petition in which local politicians were accused of being bureaucrats. Former councilor Jan Wijmenga previously stated that he thought this lobbying went too far. Former party leader Heleen de Boer (GroenLinks) agrees with that criticism in the podcast Stadhuisplein. She doesn’t think it’s okay to play on sentiment in these types of lobbies. “The sentiment of pathetic children, who otherwise wouldn’t be able to have their parents near them, that if you were against this, then you were against those children and those parents.” She herself would never have conducted this lobby like this. “You have to compete with a kind of image that you don’t want around such a discussion.”
Podcast Stadhuisplein: ‘Lobby for Ronald McDonald House focuses too much on sentiment’
