WALL OF TEXT, read the TLDR or the entire thing if you have time.

We just had elections in the Netherlands (complete disaster for the left), and because we have a functional election system that doesn't rely on any FPTP bullshit no single party got a majority of seats in parliament. This is why the largest party always has to form a coalition, a group of parties that work together, have a majority (preferably) in both chambers of parliament, and these parties then form the government.

However, forming such a coalition takes a lot of time and effort, in 2017 it took 270 something days. This year 2 people are responsible for helping form this coalition Ollongren and Jorritsma. Anyway, yesterday Ollongren tested positive for COVID-19, and thus she had to get home as quickly as she could, so she hastily got together her documents and left the buildings of parliament.

This is where it gets funny, she was photographed while walking to her car and in her hands were visible some very important notes she took relating to the forming of this coalition. Most importantly these notes contained the following sentence: Pieter Omtzigt; functie elders. To understand this I first have to explain who Pieter Omtzigt is and to explain who Pieter Omtzigt is I first have to explain the kinderopvangtoeslagaffaire, or the childcare benefits scandal in English. Here the Dutch IRS falsely accused thousands of families of fraud and forced them to pay back all the money they had received for childcare plus an extra fine. This destroyed the lives of many thousands of Dutch families, it also turned out the fraud detection system accused non-white families way more than it did white families.

The Dutch government at the time knew about this but never told parliament or the public, Omtzigt helped bring all this to light, and this scandal caused the Dutch Government to resign. Omtzigt is a member of the CDA, one of the parties that were part of the government and will likely be part of the next government, but Omtzigt is a parliamentarian and thus not part of the government. However, the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, and perhaps some higher-ups in Omtzigt's own party don't take kindly to a member of a coalition party criticizing the coalition. Pieter Omtzigt; functie elders, essentially means that they want to force Omtzigt, a critical voice, out of parliament and want to give him a function someplace else. All this has caused Ollongren and Jorritsma to step down.

TLDR; So essentially, one of the women responsible for forming the new government got COVID and accidentally leaked an evil plan to force out one of the most critical voices in the Dutch parliament, also showing that politics in the Netherlands is not fun as they would have us believe.

It might seem tame by American standards but this entire bizarre situation is a large scandal in the Netherlands and I'm sure it will be something we still remember in 10 years.