Far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders returns to Dutch campaign trail after drone plot threat

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders said Wednesday that he’s returning to the campaign trail, with two weeks to go before a general election after he briefly suspended his election activities following reports that he was a possible target of a suspected plot in Belgium to kill politicians using an explosives-laden drone.

Wilders’ populist Party for Freedom, known by its Dutch acronym PVV, won the last election in late 2023 and was the biggest bloc in a four-party ruling coalition until earlier this year, when Wilders pulled his ministers out of the government in a dispute over a crackdown on migration.

His manifesto for the upcoming election calls for measures including for a total halt to asylum-seekers entering the Netherlands, military patrols at borders to enforce the ban and the closure of recently opened asylum-seeker centers.

His party leads polls heading into the Oct. 29 election for all 150 seats in the Second Chamber, the lower house of the Dutch parliament. The Netherlands’ system of proportional representation combined with a splintered political landscape all but guarantees a coalition government.

“Elections are coming, it is campaign time and I feel a great responsibility toward the Netherlands and PVV voters,” Wilders said in a written statement on X. “So I am getting back to work.”

He said he would attend a string of television and radio debates leading up to the vote. Wilders noted that he has lived under round-the-clock protection for 21 years because of “countless death threats of all shapes and sizes.”

It remains to be seen if Wilders can cobble together a right-wing coalition if he wins the most seats. The leader of the center-right Party for Freedom and Democracy has said that she won’t join a coalition with the PVV.

Although his party won the last election and was the largest in the four-party coalition, Wilders didn’t become prime minister, because other parties wouldn’t support his leadership. Instead, a career civil servant, Dick Schoof, was appointed to lead the government that lasted just 11 months.