Ketelaar was a radical member of the Tweede Kamer who initially supported Van Kol’s motion on the Atjeh-oorlog and then withdrew that support during the sitting of 17 November 1897, after Troelstra had declared the motion to be a vote of no confidence in the Minister of Colonies.
Withdrawal of support
Ketelaar told the chamber that he had originally not intended to speak, but that the course of the debates had compelled him. Having at the outset heartily supported Van Kol’s motion, he felt himself obliged, after the various explanations given, to motivate the vote he was about to cast. He remarked in general that he did not think such motivation desirable, since it was of relatively little importance why one voted for or against a motion, and thought it particularly wrong at a time when it had constantly been said at the elections that the country must now have a working parliament and not a talking parliament; but at that moment he believed himself justified in a short word.
“Ik heb de motie gesteund, zooals zij daar lag, zonder de bedoeling dat mijne stem vóór de motie een bewijs van wantrouwen in het Ministerie of den Minister van Koloniën zou zijn.” — I supported the motion as it lay there, without the intention that my vote for the motion should be a proof of no confidence in the Ministry or the Minister of Colonies. Now, however, that Troelstra had said with raised voice that this very motion had been introduced by its movers as a proof of no confidence in the government, and that the motion would be the point of union for all who denied this minister their confidence, he thought he went far. As a non-mover of the motion Troelstra had the right to say so; but now that Van Kol had declared that he entirely agreed with Troelstra and thus departed from the explanation of the motion he had given the previous Tuesday, so that his motion now intended no confidence in the conduct of the Minister of Colonies, Ketelaar considered himself not entitled to cast his vote for it.
Troelstra’s answer
Troelstra answered that the hostile character of the motion related on their side to the government’s Atjeh policy, and that when Ketelaar and his supporters stood hostile to this minister in the matter of Atjeh policy they could range themselves with the supporters of the motion, since the motion did not wish to go outside Atjeh policy. He added that he knew supporting a motion did not always mean agreeing with its content, but that in this case it had been possible to learn that the support had originally intended approval of the content, and that Ketelaar had promised his support not after but already before Van Kol’s explanation.
The division
Notwithstanding his withdrawal of support, Ketelaar is recorded in the division list of 17 November 1897 among those voting against the motion, which was rejected by seventy-two votes to three. The other radicals who had joined the three social democrats in supporting the motion, Stoffel and Nolting, likewise appear in the list of those voting against.
See Also
- Van Kol’s motion of 16 November 1897
- Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer (16-17 November 1897)
- Pieter Jelles Troelstra
- H. van Kol
- Stoffel
- Nolting
- J. T. Cremer
- 17 November
- 1897
Source
Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, pp. 73–75, 79–80.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898 (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.