Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders will take a seat on the municipal council of The Hague where his party came second in municipal polls last week, the city said Monday. "I can confirm that Mr Wilders will take a seat on the council," a spokeswoman for the municipality, Tina Ehrami, told AFP. Wilders had listed himself in the 20th and last spot of his Party for Freedom's (PVV) list of candidates for elections in The Hague, where it took 16.8 percent of the vote and eight seats out of 45 on the municipal council. The PVV had contested only two cities: The Hague, the seat of government, and Almere near Amsterdam where it came first with 21.6 percent of the vote in a show of strength ahead of June general elections. Wilders, whose party is said by polls to now be the most popular nationally with its campaign to "stop the Islamisation of the Netherlands", won 13,636 votes for himself in The Hague while the head of his PVV list in the city, Sietse Fritsma, got 16,229 votes. The candidate in third place received 612 votes. "I didn't initially want to do it (sit on the council), but I realised Friday that I received quite a few preferential votes," in his own name, Wilders was quoted as saying Monday by Dutch news agency ANP. "For that reason, I will do it." He will remain a member of the Dutch lower house of parliament. The new municipal council of The Hague, where the Labour party PvdA came first with 21.2 percent of the vote and 10 seats, will be inaugurated on Thursday. Negotiations to form a coalition government in the city were well underway, said Ehrami. Wilders, who faces hate speech charges for calling Islam a fascist religion, campaigns for a ban on headscarves for public servants, a halt to immigration from Muslim countries and a moratorium on the erection of mosques. His party currently has nine out of 150 seats in the Dutch parliament.
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