Dutch await dramatic poll outcome

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands -- Vote counting is under way in The Netherlands with exit polls showing the party of murdered Dutch populist Pim Fortuyn has come joint second.

The opposition Christian Democrats (CDA) became the biggest vote-winning party, ousting the ruling centre-left Labout Party of Prime Minister Wim Kok, according to early estimates, Dutch news agency ANP reported.

ANP said initial projections showed the CDA had won 41 of parliament's 150 seats, ousting the centre-left.

The ANP report came just before polling stations closed at the end of the Netherlands' most dramatic election in decades.

It claimed Pim Fortuyn's List (PFL) party won 24 seats, as did the Labour party and the VVD.

Voter turnout is reported as being high in an election overshadowed by the murder of flamboyant politician Pim Fortuyn.

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Voting for the 150-seat second chamber, the policymaking body of parliament, closed at 9 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) on Wednesday.

About 12 million people were eligible to vote, and the turnout is historically between 73 and 80 percent. Fifteen parties were fighting the election.

Voting across the country was brisk as people turned out in droves despite a week-long break in campaigning after Fortuyn's death.

The uproar generated by the shooting on May 6 of 54-year-old Fortuyn, who opposed immigration saying the Netherlands was "full", was predicted to catapult his three-month-old party into a coalition government at the expense of caretaker Kok's centre-left party.

Analysts predict that the main opposition party, the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDA), may join forces with the Pim Fortuyn List in a possible coalition. (Full story)

Kok's Labour Party (PvdA), which got 29 percent of the 1998 vote, is expected to see support plummet despite eight years of economic growth and a low unemployment rate, one of the lowest in Europe.

The incumbent regime resigned last month following a report on the role of Dutch peacekeepers in the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, Bosnia.

Any shift to the right will follow a current European trend which has seen the demise of the French left in this month's presidential elections and the election of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy last year.

PFL candidates are politically inexperienced and were hand-picked by Fortuyn, a former academic and columnist.

LPF -- whose candidates include a former beauty queen, a pig farmer and a television presenter -- chose businessman Peter Langendam as its new chairman at the weekend, but will only select a new leader after the election.

Fortuyn's killing prompted widespread outrage. Many who opposed his politics supported his right of free speech. But Kok has appealed to the Dutch people to vote with their heads rather than their hearts.

Volkert van der Graaf, 32, a vegan animal rights campaigner, was remanded in custody on May 9 charged with Fortuyn's murder. (Full story).