Simon Kuper: Grieving Dutch set to give power to Fortuyn's heirs

The Dutch are expected to vote en masse for a dead man in the general election this week, as a wave of sympathy sweeps the Netherlands for the murdered anti-immigration party leader, Pim Fortuyn.

The national mourning for the gay former Marxist academic is like that in Britain for Diana, Princess of Wales. Tens of thousands stood outside Rotterdam cathedral for his funeral on Friday, chanting Fortuyn's name and singing, 'You'll Never Walk Alone'.

Most polls published before his murder by an environmental activist last Monday gave his party about 17 per cent of the vote. Hours before his death, one survey suggested his party would emerge as the largest in the election on Wednesday. But the tide of sorrow has swept up people who were not among Fortuyn's supporters. Many in the funeral crowds were members of ethnic minorities, shocked like other Dutch people by the killing.

The Dutch media has softened its stance on Fortuyn since his death, glossing over his attacks on Islam and presenting him instead as a democratic reformer determined to break the Dutch brand of consensus politics that gives power to an elite of technocrats. Articles, banners and the cards laid outside Fortuyn's brick patrician villa in Rotterdam have likened him to John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, even Jesus Christ. 'This Messiah is also dead,' is a popular slogan on banners.

A survey published yesterday by Blauw Research and the Free University of Amsterdam said voters were defecting from almost all other parties to Fortuyn's, though it had lost some of its own supporters after the death of its leader.

Marcel Boogers, a political scientist at the Catholic University of Brabant, said: 'I am convinced that the voting ballot will be an open condolence register.'

The murder has dealt a further blow to the mainstream parties, which had already been reeling under Fortuyn's attacks. Many Dutch people partly blame them for the murder, supposedly because they 'demonised' Fortuyn as a racist, creating an atmosphere in which he could be shot. 'Kok Culprit, Pim Hero,' said one banner at the funeral, referring to the Socialist Prime Minister, Wim Kok. The government is being blamed for not giving Fortuyn police protection, despite repeated threats against him.

Fortuyn's lawyers are considering suing the leader of one rival party who invoked The Diary of Anne Frank against him, linking him to Nazism, and the chairman of another who likened him to Mussolini.

Fortuyn himself had said that if anything should happen to him, other politicians would share the blame. Many of his followers believe he foresaw his death, though in his final interview, minutes before he was shot, he predicted he would live into his late eighties.

No polls of voting intentions have been published since the murder, as the election campaign has been suspended. But even before the murder, only 5 per cent of the population said they wanted the Right-Left 'purple' coalition to rule for another term. It is thought Fortuyn's party may win enough votes to form a government with the Christian Democrats and the centre-Right liberal party, VVD.

The adoration for Fortuyn has reached dimensions never before seen in a country where politicians have tended to be dull technocrats. The 'purple' coalition, in power for the last eight years, has made the Netherlands one of the most prosperous countries in Europe, with official unemployment below 2 per cent. Only a year ago the Socialists, who lead the coalition, were expected to retain power easily.

None of the mainstream parties had acknowledged the popular anger over the immigration of the past three decades. Almost 10 per cent of the country's 16 million inhabitants are now from ethnic minorities.

Playing the race card was taboo until Fortuyn revealed Dutch racism to be much stronger than previously imagined. A fluent and witty speaker, he directed most of his fervour against Islam, which he called 'a backward religion'. After 11 September he proposed declaring a 'cold war' against Islam as 'an ideological enemy of our culture'.

He said: 'Christian inhabitants of the Netherlands morally have more rights than the Islamic newcomers, because Christians have contributed to the building of our country for centuries.'

Of his home city, he said: 'Now 56 per cent of the Rotterdam population is of foreign origin. That is too many.' He wanted to force people to move house to break up supposedly-monolithic Turkish, Moroccan and Dutch West Indian neighbourhoods.

If Fortuyn's party does emerge as the largest, who might be its prime minister? It has been such a one-man vehicle that it is called simply the Pim Fortuyn List, and plans to choose his successor only after the election.

Infighting has already begun, however. Fortuyn's deputy, Joao Varela, who is of Cape Verdean origin, is not expected to win. The vice-chairman, John Dost, said on Friday: 'There is only one leader and that's me.' The party's spokesman, Mat Herben, responded: 'I am more than fed up with the internal fighting.'

The national mood of panic has yet to subside. It is still not known whether Fortuyn's suspected killer, the environmental activist Volkert van der Graaf, 32, is alleged to have acted alone. Witnesses saw him with two other men last Monday in Breda, the town Fortuyn visited shortly before the murder in Hilversum. In Van der Graaf's car police say they found the addresses of three candidates of Fortuyn's party and maps of their homes. All three are now in hiding under police guard.

Many Dutch people are angry that the foreign press compared Fortuyn to extreme right-wing leaders such as Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Austria's Jörg Haider, who had long been demonised in the Netherlands. They point out that he was unquestionably a democrat, and had never flirted with anti-Semitism.

The Dutch novelist Cees Nooteboom wrote in the German magazine Der Spiegel : 'It is certain that the reactions of many Dutch people, and at least of a part of the non-indigenous population, to his death does not fit the image of a Dutch Haider or Le Pen, also not that of a vulgar right-wing extremist and not at all that of a racist, now being spread so eagerly in part of the foreign press.'

Fortuyn himself had denied being a racist. 'Islam is a religion and a culture that is not tied to a race,' he insisted.

The attacks on him from abroad have been particularly hurtful in a country that boasts of its tolerance, is acutely aware of its international standing and seldom makes news outside its borders.