UTRECHT – ‘I see Utrecht going to destruction. I like a city that is diverse. We are losing that city.’ The words of Hans Spekman, with great involvement as a resident, former alderman of the city and ‘retired chairman’ of the PvdA.
He shows himself undiminished fierce in a new Bieb session of Wielaert Goes On. He does this in the presence of Freek de Jonge, who expresses himself about politics: ‘The atmosphere around the left is on the sick side.’ As leader of the new city party EenUtrecht, Gert Dijkstra argues for more administrative influence on the real estate world.
Apart from God, or apart from God?
That was the aim of the talk show, in a combination of the invasion in the Ukraine and the recently opened exhibition about the illustrious Sixties in Museum Catharijneconvent.
Freek de Jonge was one of the first visitors there. He has also experienced the succession of news about corona, the winter games and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It seemed to be the work of an invisible global television network manager. Or was it God? Freek de Jonge: ‘I would rather point to Fate. Putin, I believe, took Crimea after the Sochi Games. He first waits for a sporting event and then strikes.
We are seeing movement in the sports boycotts for the first time. With Neerlands Hoop we opposed the World Cup in Argentina 1978, against the rule of dictator Videla. Now the Champions League final will be moved from Saint Petersburg to Paris. I had to perform in Naarden on the evening after the invasion of Ukraine. I wondered if it was appropriate. But it has been that way for centuries. The pertinent lies that a people is the victim of.’
Gert Dijkstra: ‘You have both feet on the ground again. It is 20 years after the civil war in Yugoslavia. We grew up thinking it won’t happen to us.’
Hans Spekman: ‘I mainly feel sorry for the ordinary people there. I see them downstairs in the subway. You can point to Putin. It’s wrong, we know that. But what do we do ourselves? I think we as an international community are failing enormously. In fact, we fuel these kinds of wars. If we just point out: that’s an asshole, that’s a scumbag – I say that brutally – but if we don’t look at ourselves, it keeps going. Then we are partly to blame for those people in that metro station.’
Martine Spanjers of the Festival Leading Voices believes: ‘In these times it is important that we pay attention to culture and that it connects.’
How do you form a community?
Freek de Jonge visited the exhibition Van God Los? in the Catharijneconvent, because he is a pastor’s son and a youthful icon of the sixties. Faith had been given to him with a spoon: ‘Especially morality and ethics, not to mention conscience. In the 1960s the question was: is a conscience without God still possible? If you let go of God, you’ll have to find something else. An attitude, a philosophy, a morality, an ethics. If it’s missing, all hell is loose. Going back to another God is not possible, that is an overdue station. Now it’s about the question of how we can form a community, take care of each other and the earth.’
The left became dominant in the 1960s. Now it’s time for it again, says De Jonge: ‘If you see how society is developing, it is clear that there should be a socio-economic parliament. The atmosphere around the left is on the sick side. The people who are angry about that have little sense of history. As if the chaos is coming from the left. I am still convinced that there must be a large left-wing people’s party in the Netherlands.’
That affects Hans Spekman strongly. Fel: ‘I am left to my death and red and never attached to God. But the left is sinking into itself. The biggest enemy was not the right, but the zeitgeist that we have easily gone with. Hillary Clinton said in 2018 that she had actually won the US election. The other people were the losers. If the left thinks that way about people who are less fortunate, who don’t have such a high education, then you deserve it.’
Gert Dijkstra of EenUtrecht struggles with the concepts of left and right. He argues: ‘When it comes to security, we seem to be right-wing. We are for more cameras. In addition, we are very green, although that seems to be left-wing.’ For Spekman it is mainly about wealth inequality. ‘We are going to be a terrible yuppie city, only paid for by public money. I think that’s terrible.’
Freek de Jonge to Spekman: ‘You do feel very guilty. You should try to put that behind you. The question is what a city is. Not just yuppies. The PvdA needs to be more people-oriented.’
bobbing city council
As elsewhere, the core of the session is the housing problem. Gert Dijkstra says on behalf of EenUtrecht: ‘My plea is that we should expand, but also seriously intervene in the housing market. We’ve let the city council float for too long. We have to make hard new agreements with the real estate world about the maximum prices for housing and renting.’
In the run-up to the council elections, it all sounds too neat for Hans Spekman. He fulminates: ‘The teacher and the policeman are going to Ede. It plays into everything. Also in the rates for cultural institutions. It is a city that is bustling with life. Everything can be less sweet in the campaign. Especially if it takes us further.’
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