THE HAGUE - “I'm going to miss the islands. It may sound crazy, it felt like Limburg (province in the Netherlands). The friendliness, the village feeling. It's just a few degrees warmer there," said outgoing Undersecretary for the Interior and Kingdom Relations Raymond Knops in an interview with De Limburger.
In December, Knops was told by his party leader Hoekstra that there was no place for him in the new cabinet. “I feel like I was enjoying the game and then you are substituted without any reason for it. As if you are training for the marathon and someone suddenly says: go do something different. It feels like rehab. The disappointment is there. I don't turn around that. Also, in the Dutch national team only eleven can play, while there are more good soccer players around.”
“I'm not in politics for the game. I want to achieve results”, says Knops, who says he looks back with satisfaction on, among other things, the reconstruction of Sint Maarten after hurricane Irma and the fight against poverty in the Caribbean Netherlands. As Undersecretary for Kingdom Relations, he also tells in De Limburger that he was hindered by Dutch media reports about cheating in the purchase of land for the construction of his house. “I had to enforce public administration reforms in the Antilles. Then you must be of impeccable behavior. So am I, but those articles suggest otherwise and they were repeated over and over.”
In a post on Linkedin, Knops writes: “With great pleasure and gratitude I look back on more than 4 years as an undersecretary at the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. It was an exciting time in which a lot happened. In which I was able to meet many people in the Caribbean and the Netherlands and we were able to realize many things to improve people's lives. It ends for me now. I wish my successors every success in carrying out the tasks assigned to them!”
Today Knops will hand over his portfolio to Alexandra van Huffelen of the D66 party. That does not mean goodbye to The Hague: the former air force officer returns as a member of the Second Chamber faction of the CDA party.