Formation
After a parliamentary debate concerning the information and the coalition agreement on May 20, the informateurs did report to queen Beatrix and the same evening Jan Peter Balkenende was appointed as Formateur. Maxime Verhagen was appointed as leader of the CDA parliamentary party and together with Gerrit Zalm (VVD) and Boris Dittrich (D66) he started new negotiations on the formation of a new cabinet.
Within a week all ministers and state secretaries for the new cabinet had been identified. Because the previous cabinet with two of the three prospective coalition partners already in it had been installed only a year ago, 17 members of the new cabinet held their post and only 9 new members had to be appointed.
One flaw of the First Balkenende cabinet was corrected with the installation of the second: it contained more female members. On May 27, 2003 the Second Balkenende cabinet was sworn in the queen.
Read more about this topic: 2003 Dutch Cabinet Formation
Famous quotes containing the word formation:
“Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful—the formation of fixed habits of work.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)