Seven MPs from Geert Wilders' far-right Party for Freedom in the Netherlands have left its 26-member parliamentary group and will form their own faction due to dissatisfaction with his leadership, party leader Wilders and the breakaway MPs themselves announced today, quoted by Reuters, BTA reported.
The split represents the most serious challenge to Wilders' control of the party since its founding in 2006.
Wilders told reporters in The Hague that the seven MPs believed that the Party for Freedom should be "more constructive and work together with the new ruling coalition, rather than being rigid opposition“.
“We do not intend to do this“, he said, adding that his party would overcome the crisis.
The split comes at a time when the centrist and pro-European "Democrats-66" (D66), which won the elections in October last year, is negotiating to form a minority government in coalition with the conservative "Christian Democratic Appeal" party and the center-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy.
The Freedom Party came in second place in the elections by a narrow margin, but after the secession of its seven deputies, the Green Left-Labor Party political formation will become the largest opposition force in parliament.