On June 3, the Senate commemorated former senator Hans Wiegel. He was a member of the Senate for the VVD for nearly five years, from June 13, 1995, to April 1, 2000. In the Senate, he mainly dealt with domestic affairs. His senatorship is inextricably linked to the Night of Wiegel, which took place on May 19, 1999 in the Senate.
As a political science student, Hans Wiegel became active in the JOVD at the age of twenty, and five years later, he became the youngest member of the House of Representatives up to that time. He served as a member of the House for eleven years, from 1967 to 1982, with a four-year interruption as Minister of the Interior and Deputy Prime Minister in the first Van Agt cabinet. In addition, he served as chairman of the VVD faction in the House for seven years. In 1982, he left national politics and became the Queens Commissioner in Friesland.
Upon his departure as commissioner, he hinted at membership in the Senate.
In 1994, he told the Parool: I would fit well in the Senate. Such an independent position, really practicing dualism again. A year and a half later, it became a reality.
He is very pleased with the Senate, he reports. His debut in the Senate is a debate with Prime Minister Kok, about the budget of the Ministry of General Affairs. Wiegel is the only speaker from the side of the Senate. It cannot have been a coincidence that he chose that debate. A prime minister does not often come to the Senate.
Wiegel manages to get the prime minister to come back to the Senate on the late evening of May 18, 1999. The debate with the Minister of the Interior about the corrective referendum has been going on all day when at half-past eleven in the evening, the prime minister enters the plenary hall of the Senate. It crackles through the hall and the corridors, as a senator later describes it. The crackling is followed by a shockwave an hour and a half later. As the only member of the VVD faction, he votes against the proposal. He tells HP/DE TIJD that he wanted to set an example: politicians must show courage and be willing to make unpleasant decisions.
Senate Chairman Jan Anthonie Bruijn: Hans Wiegel practiced politics as a profession worth practicing and combined this with a great interest in people. May our respect for his person and his contributions to society and the Dutch parliamentary democracy be a support for his family and friends.