After the Dutch general election of 25 May 1977, a cabinet formation took place in the Netherlands. On 19 December 1977, this resulted in the First Van Agt cabinet. The coalition was formed by the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) and the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).
During the first five months, negotiations took place under formateur Joop den Uyl about a cabinet of Labour Party (PvdA), the largest party, CDA and D'66. This got stuck four times, and informateurs were asked to bring the parties together again. After the fourth time the break turned out to be permanent. Within a month, the CDA managed to reach an agreement with the VVD. Six members of the CDA faction — the loyalists — voted against the agreement, but tolerated the cabinet, so that the cabinet retained a majority.
The formation lasted 208 days and was then the longest Dutch cabinet formation. Due to its long duration and unexpected outcome, it is known as the "mother of all formations".
Background
Den Uyl cabinet
The Den Uyl cabinet led by Prime Minister Joop den Uyl had PvdA, D'66 and Political Party Radicals (PPR) as a coalition. As part of the progressive cooperation for the 1972 Dutch general election, these parties had a joint government program: Keerpunt 1972. During the cabinet formation of 1972-'73 the denominational parties Christian-Historical Union (CHU), Anti Revolutionary Party (ARP) and Catholic People's Party (KVP) to play each other off. The latter two provided ministers and tolerated the cabinet as an extra-parliamentary cabinet.
During this period, KVP, ARP and CHU were in the process of merging into the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). The actual merger did not take place until 1980, but the parties already wanted one list of candidates. Intended lijsttrekker was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice Dries van Agt, from the KVP. He was appreciated for his principled position in the abortion debate and the way in which he regularly antagonized the PvdA.
Relations within the cabinet were poor and the 'fighting cabinet' fell just before the elections. This only increased when opinion polls in October 1976 showed that the PvdA was in bad shape. The low point was the personal attack by PvdA MP Aad Kosto on Van Agt in the debate on Menten case on 23 February 1977. Kosto called Van Agt an incompetent minister who was unsuitable as a political leader. A month later, the cabinet fell after the cabinet crisis over land policy, one of the four major social reforms that the cabinet had announced on the basis of Keerpunt '72.
Election
For the election campaign, the three largest parties — PvdA, CDA and VVD — had their own spearheads. In these elections, the CDA participated for the first time with one joint list of candidates. The most important points for Van Agt were unemployment, inflation, abortion and 'the ethical and spiritual revival'. On the other hand, the collaboration between PvdA, PPR and D'66 fell apart due to disappointing results in previous elections and in the polls. With the election slogan 'Choose the Prime Minister, Choose Den Uyl', the PvdA mainly tried to campaign with Den Uyl as statesman. Hans Wiegel was party leader for the VVD for the second time. With the motto "clearing the rubble", Wiegel mainly focused on the PvdA. The VVD respected the CDA with a view to possible cooperation.
Coalition preferences were already expressed during the election campaign. PvdA held on to a cabinet with a majority of progressive ministers. However, the CDA stated that it no longer wanted to govern in an unequal position with the PvdA, as it did during the Den Uyl cabinet. The PvdA demanded that the CDA rule out governing with the VVD, to which Van Agt replied, "We do not bend to the left and we do not bend to the right". D'66, again led by Jan Terlouw, presented itself as a "reasonable alternative" between PvdA and VVD, but ruled out a coalition of CDA, VVD and D'66.
Distribution of seats
The PvdA won ten seats and reached 53 seats, the highest score by any party to date. The CDA obtained 49 seats, one seat more than its predecessors in 1972. After the elections, the CDA faction consisted of 26 KVP members, 12 ARP members and 11 CHU members. The VVD won six seats and ended up with 28 seats. D'66 increased from six to eight seats. The remaining parties dropped from 31 to twelve seats in total, and did not play a meaningful role in the formation. Based on this result, PvdA and CDA already had a majority of 102 seats. Supplemented with D'66, this would be 110 seats. On the other hand, the combination of CDA and VVD also had a narrow majority of 77 seats.