Typing bravely through their tears at al-Reuters,
…. after rejecting a draft constitution for Europe four years ago, delivered a solid bloc for anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders to take to Europe’s parliament, exit polls showed Thursday.
Underscoring skepticism over further European integration, Wilders’ right-wing Freedom Party appeared set to win four out of 25 contested seats in elections for the European Parliament being held over the next four days.
With the gains, the PVV will become the second-biggest Dutch party in the European parliament. More from the WsJ;
No politician exemplifies establishment fears more than Mr. Wilders, a charismatic orator whose platinum-blond hair has been compared to Mozart’s wig. He is a polarizing figure in European politics who has been banned from entering the U.K. under hate-speech laws. He travels with bodyguards and keeps where he sleeps a secret.
Mr. Wilders, 45 years old, has sat in the Dutch Parliament since 1998. In 2004, he left the conservative People’s Party over a dispute about whether Turkey should be allowed to join the EU. (It isn’t a member but has applied to join.) He founded the Party for Freedom and discovered a knack for tapping into Dutch xenophobia.
The Netherlands has 800,000 Muslims, mostly Turks and Moroccans, in a population of 17 million. Mr. Wilders has progressively ramped up his anti-Islamic rhetoric, calling the Koran a “fascist book” and making a movie depicting Islam as inherently violent. The British government cited the movie, “Fitna,” as grounds to ban Mr. Wilders from visiting the U.K. earlier this year.
Mr. Wilders added a strong anti-EU plank to his platform during a 2005 Dutch referendum on a new EU constitution. He helped defeat the measure, effectively scuttling the project.
His party, known by its Dutch acronym, the PVV, won nine of 150 seats in parliament in the 2006 national elections. Polls now show that roughly one-fifth of Dutch voters support Mr. Wilders, making the PVV the most popular political group in the country and its leader a long-shot candidate for prime minister. The next general election, however, isn’t until 2011.