A centre-right maverick, Pieter Omtzigt, could win the Dutch election

PIETER OMTZIGTEUMPCDACDA is the most popular politician in the Netherlands, the ’s fifth-biggest economy, in part because in 2021 the country’s leaders apparently tried to ditch him. Mr Omtzigt, an who then belonged to the Christian Democrats (), had for years irritated the government (of which the was a member) with relentless questioning over a huge in which tens of thousands of taxpayers were falsely charged with fraud. During coalition negotiations after the general election that year, an official was caught on camera with a sheet of notes bearing the phrase “Omtzigt: position elsewhere?” Many Dutch were outraged, reckoning that this meant that party bigwigs wanted to promote the troublesome gadfly to a harmless sinecure in Brussels.