Election to change face of Dutch politics

THE Netherlands is set for a cliff-hanging general election today. A year ago, a dapper gay populist who railed against immigrants in general and Muslims in particular and then was shot to death in a car-park nine days before elections.

As the Dutch return to the polls, a new face has caught their eye: a 33-year-old woman from Somalia who defied death threats to take up the fight to emancipate Muslim women.

Like the assassinated Pim Fortuyn, Ayaan Hirsi Ali denounces Islam as backward and repressive to women. She says she wants to take shelters for battered women and turn them into liberation camps, teaching women to be free of their abusive environment.

Hirsi Ali represents a different Netherlands the first or second generation immigrant not from the west. These 1.6 million people now make up 10% of the nation, and are multiplying eight times faster than the general population.

Dutch politics, long the arena of staid, soft-spoken professionals, are in upheaval. Today, the faces on election poster are young, eager, aggressive and mostly unfamiliar. Even the prime minister, who is seeking re-election, was largely unknown a year ago.

Ahead of today's vote, opinion polls were swinging wildly, suggesting a third of voters are undecided but auguring a stunning recovery for the left-of-centre Labour Party.

Last May, voters evicted Labour and elected a three-party rightist coalition. It included the protest party of Fortuyn, slain by an animal rights activist who later confessed and is awaiting trial.

Squabbling among Fortuyn's inheritors paralysed the new government. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, leader of the Christian Democratic Alliance, resigned in frustration after just 87 days in office, but hopes to regain power in a right-leaning alliance.

The 2002 election was seen as part of a backlash against Muslim immigrants, who are often blamed for rising crime and social unrest. The September 11 attacks and the discovery of potential terrorist cells in Europe only heightened these suspicions.

If Labour stages a comeback, credit will go to Wouter Bos, a 39-year-old former Shell Oil manager and junior finance minister who has made criticism of his own party his main campaign theme