D66 candidate Yesim Candan previously applied for FVD – and withdrew after one day

One day after the announcement of D66’s draft candidate list, Yesim Candan withdrew. She was in 11th place.

Her decision, which she announced on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday afternoon, came after questions from NRC about her application five years ago at Forum for Democracy. The top of D66 was not aware of this.

In January 2018, Candan had several conversations with the then leadership of FVD about her candidacy for the Amsterdam city council. Several people who were present at discussions about her candidacy confirmed this. The application did not lead to her getting a place on the list of candidates for the municipal elections in March of that year. However, she continued to keep in touch with party leader Thierry Baudet.

In 2017, Candan wanted to enter the House of Representatives for the CDA, but she was rejected from the list of candidates at the last minute. That hurt her a lot, she said later de Volkskrant. “I’m exhausted. I am the victim of backroom politics.”

‘Hypocritical party’

Candan (48), columnist at RTL News and diversity & inclusion researcher at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, was a new face at D66. With her eleventh place, she was one of the three high-ranking newcomers on the draft candidate list for the upcoming House of Representatives elections.

On Tuesday morning, there was some fuss about Candan on social media, because as a publicist she did not appear to be very popular with D66 and former party leader Sigrid Kaag. On (then) Twitter a year ago she called D66 a “hypocritical party”. According to her, Kaag was “a farce as a leader” (April 2022) and “too elitist, not popular” (May 2020).

In a column From September 2021, Candan defended a much-discussed cartoon by cartoonist Ruben Oppenheimer NRC , which depicted Kaag as a witch on a broomstick flying towards the Twin Towers in New York. That association with witch and terrorist was completely wrong with many D66 members at the time. Candan thought that was nonsense. “The power of a cartoon, a cartoon, is precisely that it is unsubtle.”

In the same column she also describes Kaag and two other female ministers from the Rutte III cabinet as “witches”. According to Candan, they had failed in the chaotic evacuation of Dutch people from Afghanistan during the advance of the Taliban.

Fortunately, in this country we don’t have to agree on everything

Yesim Candan on X

In a statement on X Candan responded on Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. to the fuss about her critical columns about D66. “Fortunately in this country we have the freedom to say what you want and we don’t have to agree on everything.”

Around that time NRC the spokesperson for party leader Rob Jetten asked whether the party leadership was aware of Candan’s application for Forum for Democracy in 2018. At half past five Candan short statement on X know that she will withdraw as a candidate Member of Parliament after a day. She does not mention her FVD past, but writes that her candidacy with D66 has evoked “a lot of reactions and questions”. “That intensity has not left me unmoved.” In order to protect herself and “not unnecessarily damage” the party, she has decided to withdraw immediately.