Soon, May 6, 12:10, Sywert van Lienden will be a guest at Buitenhof. I didn't really want to share the rant below. I'm doing it now anyway, exclusively for my mailing listers because I hope to have some credit with that. I don't put it in the overview (for the time being), it is a somewhat too personal tirade against the swollen administrative types that our country is full of. It is not a carefully considered article, I can't find the right form.
At the same time, as a result of the Sywert affair, I see patterns where things go wrong all the time: the officials who are not prepared (and have never been trained) for the tasks to be fulfilled and who still take everything to themselves because they think they can do better. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect, known from psychology: incompetent people lack the metacognitive ability to see that their assumptions, choices, reasoning, conclusions and methods are wrong precisely because of their incompetence. This accelerates mass formation: that is the irrational pursuit of supposed (also self-destructive) solutions to collective fear.
But what is Sywert going to say in Buitenhof? My assessment: "I said not to make a margin on the face masks, I never said that I would not charge a handling fee. It takes years of preparation and planning." The general opinion is that he has taken advantage of the situation. I also see it as an unequal battle between a calculating fox and cackling panic birds. There is a gray area between seeing opportunities and exploiting a situation. So I look at it from the other side in the rant below about smug administrative incapacity. They asked for it themselves.
Sywert van Lienden has been a jury member for many years past event of the Anne Vondeling Prize, handing out medals of honour at the interface of politics and journalism. Medals of honour have already been put in a questionable light this week when Jaap van Dissel received a KNAW award. Praise is thus less and less like a tribute and smells more and more like a lobbying tool. Jury members are networkers, lobbyists, career tigers. Soon accepting an award will be equivalent to surrendering your integrity.
The administrative Netherlands is having a hard time. The tunnel vision of incapable consultants causes unprecedented damage to society, policymakers take control and planning promptly falls into the water, financial mismanagement is boundless: procurement is bypassed, resulting in missing invoices and reckless spending. Supervision fails: the country is full of care desks and care institutes, supervisors, care quality guards and budget guards and they all keep their mouths shut – you don't bite the hand that feeds you. The average volunteer association is doing better and is better controlled.
The coronaphobes are easy prey. In their collective fear, they can no longer think sharply, so even skeptics fall back on their underbelly of reputations instead of critically evaluating factual content (if they even possess that ability), 'because we are in a crisis'. Side effects, costs, misery – nothing matters because the problem must be solved with discipline and vaccines. Everyone keep your mouth shut, you hand in your civil rights and you may temporarily get some of it back when we have injected you, something that may not work optimally and so on, but there is no time for that right now. Money is no object.
Seizing an unlikely opportunity, is that exploitation?
For someone who keeps a cool head, this offers enormous opportunities. With a little lie - at least in relation to the enormities that pass in review every day in the House of Representatives and in the media - a nice business deal can be made. As if the deal would not have been made without that supposed lie 'for free'. The whole parade of civil servants, politicians and everything that surrounds it has gone along with it. Because there is a crisis, so we have to get on with it. Call to van Dissel "Is that a reasonable price for a face mask?", he mumbles something about "given the situation we are in" and "submit a request to the purchasing department" and "in that order of magnitude" and Hugo is covered. It may make a difference of a few dimes, but who cares, because covid. Short lines, that's what we like.
In business, there are traders who thrive on the principle 'we ask what the fool is willing to give for it'. In this way, the simpletons cleverly turn a leg. In trade, the buyer always pays too much, otherwise there is no trade. It is up to the trader to make outrageous profits. This applies in small and large ways: shareholders do not want it any other way.
Questions about the face mask deal
- Was the deal made under false pretenses? Well, false, false... They also cheat against the population to get things done, that's how it goes, don't you, you sometimes propose something more favorable or worse than you actually expect? Especially with face masks! You got what you deserved.
- Where are the contracts stating that no profit would be made – and the corresponding purchase invoices to prove this?
- Why was there no payment directly to the suppliers? You have a whole ministry at your disposal, don't they have time? You're not going to transfer someone 100 million based on an invoice and some smooth talk, are you?
- Do you know how hopeless it is to become a preferred supplier to the government or a large organization at all?
- Tenders, hello?
- Is it really true that it would all be 'for free'? Where does it say that? And why don't you, as a government, insist that you want to pay a decent compensation? Don't want to spend money or anything?
- Haven't the pharmaceutical companies made similar deals with the same 'negotiators'? Billions in profits on the backs of the citizen with the exclusion of any liability? So what is the problem if someone has some money left over? Don't double standards, Dunning-Krugers.
After the wasted billions, I can't really worry about Sywert's millions. If packages of money are thrown, you should not be surprised if such a package is occasionally conveniently caught. The billion-dollar deals with the pharmaceutical companies, the devastation in society, that is really of a different order.
Sywert van Lienden closed a face mask deal with a profit of 9 million (actually 40 million according to other sources). How did he get into that position? Well, he's just good at that. He was also allowed to join a prestigious jury that apparently could not judge its own candidate members very well. A jury, created by politicians (and paid for, I think, although the mandatory annual reports cannot be found on the site), which holds an honorable prize in front of political journalists: the Anne Vondeling Prize. Koos van Houdt confession in a Editorial piece publicly claiming to have ever accepted a similar price, but at a European level. I try to imagine what should be in such a jury if things take place at European hotemetoten level.
Apart from the balloting, the Anne Vondeling jury seems to be doing fine, for example, I also see Follow The Money as one of the laureates among the national newspapers. Yet, in the current field of tension between politics and journalism, such a lobby from politics to journalism is starting to taste different.
Juries as lobby clubs
There has to be lobbying and chatter, fortunately politicians cannot just engage in bribery – apart from handing out tickets for the job carousel. Foundations are therefore set up to glue people who may already have a job or who are not eligible for a European, mayoral or political position for other reasons: too little administrative experience, for example. A jury member must have that because before you know it, such a person will blow the whistle, it is still a matter of trust. That falls under administrative integrity.
Such foundations want to cultivate goodwill, draw attention, create support, set a course. This is often done through, for example, the handing out of symbolic attributes: pins, coins, certificates, even a necklace (to hang around, not to chain someone with). In this way, role models are created with which desired behaviour is set as an example at festive and publicity-interesting awards ceremonies that can act as a carrier of the underlying message.
They are still directors
A word about the club of the decoration awarders above. The first award ceremony of the Mérite Européenne took place in 1998, presumably immediately after the launch of the their current website. The Mérite has not met since March 2020 (!) because, yes, covid. Then you can't meet of course because you are not allowed to get together because covid. How that meeting works in the business world, no one apparently wonders. By the way, the Catshuis has met regularly throughout the lockdown because covid – but they didn't know that in Europe. So the existential union has to be patient.
"Journalist receives prize named after politician", whether you are waiting for that as an independent journalist, I don't know.
Decisive governance
Former prize winner Koos asked the current chairman of the Anne Vondeling Prize how Sywert ended up in the jury, but that happened under the previous board, so then everything stops, of course. There is then no longer an active memory of this among directors. Always busy with minutes and annual reports but yes, you can't keep everything. Then there is no more responsibility, no reason to reconsider the admission criteria, let alone to take a closer look at the antecedents of other jury members because apparently strange things have happened in the previous board period. None of that. Then you are really a director. Keep the ranks closed. Speak with one voice, especially when there is pressure. 40 million in the pockets of a supplier of face masks who don't really do much anyway. And afterwards it turned out to be unsound (or were those others?). Those things happen, administrators understand that among themselves.
Hopefully an investigative journalist will come up with the idea to dig into that previous board and reconstruct Sywert's career path. There are probably some loose ends hanging there to follow the tangle into. That will result in a nice biography and I am looking forward to the final film and - if the film wins prizes - the musical about that apparent corps ball. A 'Wolf of Wall Street / Catch me if you can'-like scenario is quite conceivable with those antics.
By the way: In Haarlem there is such a person in prison: Simon Raedts, charming charismatic man, clock on, chairman of Bevrijdingspop, commissionerships here and there, Rotary member, VIP seats at Ajax, trips abroad etc. I don't know if he has also been on juries, that would fit well into the pattern. In the end, he was caught for fraud and embezzlement of several millions. He leaves a trail of destruction behind and nevertheless remains a convinced victim of unreasonable demands. He is even willing to stay in prison for years for his principles. Somewhere in a German bank account, the millions are waiting for him – but he has lost his password so that cannot be proven. Copies that were supposed to convince the court to the contrary turned out to be forged. That too is a great soap opera. Then Sywert has played it more skillfully.
The Umfeld is actually more interesting
I think it would be especially interesting to see to which people such people owe their advance. That must be done through intercession. Who is allowed to be on such a jury or administrative body? Are they yes-men? Followers? Opportunists? Or clear thinkers with striking observations who can shake things up? Nobody really wants that, you were not created to question yourself, after all, it is not a philosophical company. A jury group with only distrustful critics is not going to work either, I understand that, but when I see how little critical capacity there is among supervisors, in journalism, among ministers, then we do have a problem when it comes to group compositions. Is it HR? It seems as if things are going wrong, wherever a course of events is poured into a system with policy officials, advisors and other interchangeable puppets. Unlike entrepreneurs, they are not immediately in the (financial) pain if they do something wrong, that could have something to do with it. Roel Coutinho was also such an interchangeable substitute, look at what we have now.
Unlike entrepreneurs, vicaries are not immediately in (financial) pain if they do something wrong. If it hurts at all, it is -if they are smart- their successor. In such a situation, you can easily transfer tens of millions from someone else's bank account to a self-employed person or company.
Sywert's success must be due to his network, he had no earnings. He came out of university cold when he took a seat on the Anne Vondeling jury. Maybe he has important relatives? There are plenty of rickety wheelbarrows driving around in 'the circuit' but on the other hand, he can really have an unlikely chat full of promise, opportunism and syrup-around-the-mouth-smearing. These are undeniable talents if used well: perhaps he should go into politics, or work for the state media as a spokesperson – I mean journalist. Then he can immediately hope for a medal from his ex-jury. He may be unethical and not right, but once again the government has blundered, acted carelessly, demonstrated incompetence and lacked overview. I would say: shared guilt.
