The future of the Dutch coalition government after the withdrawal of a junior partner hangs in the balance after Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende tendered his cabinet's resignation to Queen Beatrix on Friday.

The Queen, on Balkenende's advice, will open a round of consultation with all leaders of political parties in parliament to determine what to do next -- to give Balkenende a chance to form a minority government or call early elections.

Balkenende's Christian Democrats (CDA) and the remaining coalition partner, the Liberal Party (VVD), together hold 72 seats in the 150-seat lower house parliament, four seats short of a majority.

D66, which holds six seats in parliament and three seats in Balkenende's 25-member cabinet, pulled out from the coalition Thursday after the other two partners refused to let Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk go, as was demanded by D66.

The withdrawal left Balkenende with little choice but to announce the resignation of the whole center-right cabinet, 11 months ahead of a scheduled general election next May.

This means that the CDA and the VVD ministers will stay on in a caretaker capacity without the D66 ministers until the next election, which could be as early as this autumn.

Caretaker or minority government

However, it was clear Friday that the Christian Democrats and the Liberals are keen to stay in office as a minority government until next May rather than a powerless caretaker administration.

After a meeting of his fallen cabinet on Friday, Balkenende said a government with clout is needed to complete some of the cabinet's unfinished work, including the preparations for the 2007Budget which is to be submitted in September, and the planned deployment of 1,400 troops to Afghanistan in August.

By Dutch law a caretaker government cannot implement new or controversial proposals.

For the rump cabinet, forming a minority government would require the support of one or more of the opposition parties, which appears a tough task.

Most opposition parties are jubilant after the fall of the government and are eager to see an early election. Wouter Bos, leader of the Labor Party, has said he wants the election held as soon as possible.

A poll published on Thursday showed that the Labor Party will be the largest party in parliament with 42 seats if the election is held now, while Balkenende's Christian Democrats would lose six of their 44 seats and possibly become opposition.

Labor's likely closest allies, the Socialist Party and the Green Left Party, would also stand to gain according to the poll, and they seem quite impossible to provide the center-right government with some ministers.

The most obvious candidate would be the populist Pim Fortuyn Party (LPF), which was responsible for the implosion of Balkenende' s first coalition in 2002 after just 87 days in power.

But this would be risky as Balkenende had already known from his first cabinet that the LPF was a unstable and unreliable partner. The party is now embroiled in infighting and opinion polls suggest it will be wiped out in the next election.

If the CDA fails to secure support from opposition, it will have to face an early election.

But this does not necessarily translate into a defeat for the CDA because the party is now rapidly making up ground on the Labor in polls, following signs of an economic upturn after years of stagnation.

Finger pointing
 
Balkenende's second coalition government collapsed at a time when most think it is beginning to gain from a long-awaited economic recovery.

The coalition parties are pointing fingers at each other for the responsibility for the downfall. VVD leader Mark Rutte said D66's decision to quit was "shameful" and his fellow VVD member, deputy prime minister Gerrit Zalm referred to the fall of the cabinet as " unfortunate and wrong."

CDA leader Maxime Verhagen described it as "incomprehensible" that D66 had decided to bring down the cabinet "just when we are reaping the rewards."

But D66 leader Lousewies van der Laan blamed the CDA and the VVD for the fall of the cabinet, saying they were not willing to sacrifice Verdonk to continue the work of the cabinet.

Unnecessary row
 
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose Dutch citizenship affair sparked the current cabinet row over Verdonk, reacted to the government's collapse with regret.

She said from Washington that the cabinet should not fall just because of Verdonk's handling of her citizenship affair.

"I feel very sad about it," Hirsi Ali told CNN. "There's a complex of feelings going through me at the moment, and I feel the Cabinet should not have resigned over this issue."

De Telegraaf, the biggest circulating newspaper in the country, was scathing in its criticism of the whole affair.

"The fall of the government was unnecessary and regrettable," the paper said in its editorial. "The government still had a lot to do to complete the most significant reforms in recent decades."

Many Dutch voters also questioned the need for a new poll. Many think the whole affair about Hirsi Ali's Dutch passport is just a little thing, and the politicians made too much fuss about it.

(Xinhua News Agency July 3, 2006)