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Adrianus Petrus Wilhelmus (Ad) Melkert (February 12, 1956) is a Dutch politician, who served as chair of the parliamentary party and Minister of Social Affairs and Employment for the social-democratic PvdA. He led the PvdA to a historic low in the contentious 2002 general elections, which were won by the CDA and the List Pim Fortuyn party. He currently serves as Associate Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme.

Life

Life before politics

Melkert came from a middle class family in Gouderak. His father was a barber. Melkert attended a Roman-Catholic primary school in Moordrecht until 1968. He continued to study at the public Coornhert Gymnasium in Gouda, specialising in the arts. In the last year of his secondary education he took a job in the market of Gouderak, working for a greengrocer. He graduated in 1974 and went on to study political science at the university of Amsterdam. During this time he became active within the leftwing Christian PPR, he served as a member of the board of the Political Youth Contact, the youth organization of the PPR between 1978 and 1980. In the same period he was also a member of the general board of the Dutch Branch of the European Movement, the chairperson of the Council of European National Youth Committees and the chairperson of the Dutch Platform International Youth Work. In 1979 he was also elected into the party board of the PPR, he was third candidate on the PPR's list for the 1979 European Parliament Elections. He graduated in 1981. For his masters' thesis he received the prize of the Dutch Society for International Relations, for best thesis of 1981. His thesis concerned the foreign policy of the Den Uyl Cabinet.

In 1981 he became general secretary of the youth forum of the European Community in Brussel. As such he attended an illegal youth conference in Chile, then ruled by Pinochet, where he met his wife, Mónica León Borquez. Meanwhile internal tensions within the PPR heightened: Melkert was a member of the so-called 'blues' or 'Godebald'-group, which favoured closer cooperation with the PvdA and the social-liberal D66. In 1981 the conflict came to an end: the so-called 'reds', who favoured closer cooperation with the leftwing socialist PSP and the communist CPN, and the 'greens', who favoured an independent green party, banded together and many blues left the party for the PvdA, including Melkert. In 1984 he became the director of Internal Affairs of NOVIB, the Dutch branch of Oxfam, and moved to The Hague. He also became a member of the board of the local PvdA branch. In 1986 he published a book about International development in the Netherlands called "The Next Minister: Development Cooperation within the Cabinet, 1965-19?".

Political Life

In 1986 Melkert was elected into the lower house of parliament. In the first years he was the party's spokesperson on foreign affairs, development cooperation and environmental affairs.

After the 1989 elections Melkert became the financial spokesperson of the PvdA and as such was the party's primary spokesperson in the debates on the national budget. Between 1990 and 1994 he was vice-chairman of the parliament's committee on finance.

As an MP, Melkert also participated in several boards of civil society organisations: he was a member of the board of advisors of the Foundation Communication Development Cooperation, chairman of the Foundation Development Cooperation Almere-Port Sudan, and vice-chairman of the Atlantic Committee. Furthermore he had a column in the Gooi- en Eemlander, a local paper in the region of Hilversum and Almere.

In 1994, Melkert became the Minister of Social Affairs and Employment in the First Kok cabinet. As such he was responsible for one of the main goals of the cabinet: in the words of formateurs, "Employment, Employment and Employment". As minister he was known for his work ethic: he had bought a mail carrier's cart, which he would fill with dossiers each Friday, returning to work on Monday having read all dossiers. His work ethic can also be seen in the high number of policies and laws he initiated as minister.

• In 1995 he initiated a plan to employ 40,000 longtime unemployed people. Unemployed people would be offered a so-called 'Melkert-job,' which was subsidized by the national government. Often these people would work in the public sector, taking a job such as tram-conductor or high school janitor.
• In 1995 Melkert also published the note "the other side of the Netherlands", in whih he proposed several plans to combat and prevent silent poverty and social exclusion. This led to the 1997 law Prevention and Combat of Poverty and Social Exclusion. It changed the social security laws and the old age pensions laws, giving municipalities more ways to give the poorest special social benefits.
• In the same year he also wrote the note "Flexibility and Certainty" in which he made proposals for the flexibilisation of the labour market.
• In 1997 he published the note together with De Grave, the staatssecretaris of social affairs, called "Working on Security", in which the future of the social security system was researched, it included plans to reform the way old-age pensioned are financed.
• In the same year he also iniated a plan for so-called "white charladies" which legalized hiring charladies by individuals without paying taxes or social benefits. The plan was supposed to combat unemployment of the lower educated and the informal economy.
• In 1997 he united all employment laws, like the Youth Work law, and the so-called Job-pools into one Law Activation Working-Seeking which gave municipalities more possibilities to employ the longterm unemployed.

As minister of Social Affairs he often came into conflict with the VVD Minister of Finance, Zalm.

After the 1998 elections in which he was the fifth candidate of the party, Melkert became chair of the parliamentary party of the PvdA. He also served as chair of the parliament's committee on Information and Security Services. During his period as chairman the party discipline tightened. The PvdA got the image of an arrogant governing party. He was quoted in saying: "we don't need to debate this, we already have a majority". He came in conflict with popular PvdA MP Van Gijzel, over the spokespersonship on fraud in the construction sector and Van Gijzel presently left parliament. Melkert also upheld a polict of marginalizing and isolating the Socialist Party: PvdA MPs were forbidden to co-sign or even vote in favour of any SP motions. Nonetheless Melkert was seen as a competent politician, and considered the party's "crown prince," supposed to succeed prime-minister Wim Kok. In December 2001 Kok officially retired as political leader of the PvdA and Melkert was appointed to succeed him.

Elections of 2002

Melkert became the PvdA's top candidate for the 2002 elections. It was generally expected that either he or VVD leader Dijkstal would become the next prime minister, and that elections would revolve around the question whether the conservative liberal VVD or the PvdA would become the largest party.

The elections went in an entirely different direction, when flamboyant populist Pim Fortuyn entered the electoral arena. Fortuyn, who campaigned on issues like immigration, integration and the state of the public sector, concentrated his campaign on the PvdA, intent on showing that that party was responsible for what he called the "ruins of eight years of purple", the latter being the nickname for the liberal and social coalition that had governed the Netherlands for the preceding eight years. In several televised debates between Fortuyn and Melkert it became obvious that Melkert was no match for Fortuyn's unconventional debating style and charisma. In the now infamous debate on the night when the results of the 2002 municipal elections were made public and which had both Melkert and Fortuyn participating, the latter, having just won the elections in Rotterdam, made a lively enthusiastic impression, leaving few opportunities unused to mock Melkert who slumped in his chair, an expression of sour distaste and contempt on his face. This image dominated the rest of the election campaign. A later debate on the program Netwerk was also very typical for the different style of Fortuyn and Melkert: in the one-on-one debate, Melkert responded to every question of the debate leader with a detailed plan, and every time Fortuyn proposed one his plans, Melkert would respond: "Footnotes, professor!" implying that Fortuyn's plans were not realistic and lacked detail. This, however, made Melkert look arrogant rather than competent.

During the elections the competent career politician Melkert attempted to humanize his image: it was revealed that he liked cooking (he published a cookbook on his personal website), and that he was big Feyenoord fan. Nonetheless, the image of a somewhat boring bureaucrat remained. In May 2006 Melkert told politician-turned-television maker Paul Rosenmöller that "he had hid too much in the tower of the governor", creating a paternalistic image, "something which did not appeal to the voter".

A mere nine days before the election, on May 6, 2002, Fortuyn was assassinated by Volkert van der G.. A few relatively minor riots erupted in the Hague, where Melkert was at the time. He left the city in a hurry. Melkert began to receive death threats including a loaded gun sent in the mail, and he and his family felt compelled to go into hiding for a short while.

Melkert's PvdA lost nearly half its seats in the Tweede Kamer and went from 45 (out of 150 seats) to 23. The party fell from first place to third. Melkert resigned as political leader on the evening of the elections; he was replaced by former Tweede Kamer chairperson, Jeltje van Nieuwenhoven. Melkert stayed in parliament for a short while. His last major debate in parliament was on the state of the European Union.

International Political Life

In November, 2002 Melkert was appointed executive director of the World Bank, on advice of the minister of Finance, Zalm. In April 2005 he was a serious candidate to become Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), but the post went to Kemal Derviş. In January 2006 Melkert was appointed Associate Administrator of the UNDP.

External links

• Ad Melkert named to senior post at U.N. Development Programme
• Biography: Ad Melkert, UNDP Associate Administrator

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 16 December 2008, at 10:27.

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