THE HAGUE — Until a couple of weeks ago, the political surveys ahead of the October 29 elections did not look good for Heera Dijk. But that perspective changed dramatically when D66 made significant progress when surveys projected 18 seats for the party in the Dutch parliament. Dijk is the number 18 on the candidates-list of D66. This increases the chances that the Caribbean part of the Kingdom gets a representative of its own in The Hague.
The 45-year old Dijk was born and raised in Delft in the Netherlands as the daughter of a mother from Curacao and a father from Suriname. “They came to the Netherlands to study and they stayed, but their connection to the Caribbean has always remained warm and close,” Dijk said in an interview with René Zwart of DossiekKoninkrijksrelaties.nl. “We often went there to visit family. My mother was a mentor at the Foundation Study-Financing Curacao for twenty years. In that function she guided students that went for their studies to the Netherlands. Then you experience close at hand how difficult it can be for students who are far away from home. They struggle with the different culture and the Dutch language.”
Asked how she ended up in politics, she says: “Through a modeling contest.” On social media she shared her experience growing up in the Netherlands as a girl of color. “An old school friend said that I ought to go into politics. I was not immediately enthused, but it still made me think. For the municipal elections of 2022 I filled out an application. Education is very important to me and therefore the choice for D66 was a logical one.”
Initially she was the number 11 on the D66-list, but party-members voted her up to place 8. Before the elections two higher placed candidates stepped out of the race, moving her further up to place 6. D66 went from 5 to 6 seats in the municipal council of Delft and that was all Dijk needed to claim her spot.
When the Schoof-cabinet collapsed earlier this summer it was the same old school friend who encouraged her to announce her candidacy for the Second Chamber. She spoke about her ambitions with the selection committee and with party leader Rob Jetten. For a ‘new kid in town’ she got a remarkably high position on the D66-list: number 18. Initially that position did not offer any perspective on a seat in the Dutch parliament. “But my grandmother used to say: you never know how a little bird flies,” she says. With the support of her mother she went on the campaign trail. When her mother passed away on August 26, she paused her political activities.
The sudden death of her mother started Dijk thinking about her roots. “They call me a yu di Kòrsou (a child of Curacao), but I often wondered if I am even allowed to feel that way. I don’t even speak Papiamento. Then I discovered that most of the boys of the Curacao-team were born in the Netherlands but that they dedicate themselves with a great deal of passion for our island. That made me realize that I felt that passion as well; I am proud of Curacao.”
If she becomes a parliamentarian, Dijk wants to give all six Caribbean islands a voice. “Maybe I know more about Curacao and Aruba than about the other islands because of family ties but I have established several contacts and my sources are telling me a lot. I am open, I want to learn, and I want to know everything. I am reading a lot so I am happy that you (René Zwart – ed.) gave me a copy of the bundle about fifteen years of Caribbean Netherlands. I started already with the digital version. There is a lot of room for improvement on the BES-islands, I read. And oh, of course I am going to study Papiamento.”
Dijk mentions that there is one pre-condition. “It is not a given that I will get the dossier Kingdom Relations. I indicated in my application that I would love that, but it is the new faction in parliament that decides about the spokesperson for certain dossiers. I would of course find it fantastic to be useful for the islands as a member of parliament – if I get that far.”
Dijk is a mother of two and she teaches professional skills for the HBO-ICT course at the University of Applied Sciences in The Hague. Education is her thing: “Not all children receive proper guidance at home and they are not all seen at school. This creates opportunity-inequality. I want all children to have equal opportunities in education and that is not happening now. Where you live and where you grow up determines for a large part the rest of your life. This is why I feel at home with D66.”
Dijk is not the only Caribbean candidate for the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, but the others are all low on the candidates-lists: Erica Weever (14. SP), Glen Helberg (22. Bij1), Henco Cecilia (24. Christian Union) and Simone Richardson (32. VVD).
If D66 wins fewer than 18 seats, Dijk is still reasonably certain of her seat because candidates that are higher on the list will most likely become members of the next government.
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