Irate immigrants could swing Dutch election to left

AMSTERDAM, Nov 21 (Reuters) Abdeslam bin Ali is angry. Dutch society is becoming increasingly racist, he says. Like many immigrants, he will vote for Labour in Wednesday's election, hoping to oust the centre-right government.

After years of heated debate about immigration, the issue has barely featured in this year's campaign due to voter fatigue and a hardening of attitudes across all main political parties, but immigrants could still help determine the election outcome.

''My son couldn't find an apprenticeship because he is an immigrant. There is a lot of discrimination,'' said Bin Ali, who came to the Netherlands from Morocco in 1979 aged 23.

''Dutch children and foreign children are separated. In the school near where I live, there are only foreign children... It isn't normal. You must bring everybody together,'' he said.

Bin Ali was speaking at a campaign event in the deprived western outskirts of the Dutch capital that is home to many immigrants, including Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-Moroccan who killed filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh in 2004.

The murder exacerbated racial tensions in a country whose reputation for tolerance had already been undermined by the meteoric rise in 2002 of the populist Pim Fortuyn, who attacked Islam and said the Netherlands could not absorb more foreigners.

''In the last four years, not enough noise has been made about divisions between immigrant and non-immigrant, between Muslim, non-Muslim,'' 36-year-old Labour candidate Samira Abbos told the Moroccan community meeting. ''I want to fight back.'' More than 1 million Dutch of immigrant origin are estimated to be eligible to vote in the general election -- almost 10 per cent of the electorate -- and their views are often underrepresented in mainstream opinion polls.

Those polls give the ruling Christian Democrats (CDA) a comfortable lead over their Labour rivals of about five to 10 seats in the 150-seat parliament, but immigrant voters could help Labour catch up, making the race too close to call.

NECK-AND-NECK RACE ''If there is a high turnout among immigrants, Labour would gain three seats in all general polls, while CDA would lose three. So a high turnout could mean a neck-and-neck election result,'' said Foquz, a group which polls immigrants.

Foquz researcher Jorge Cuartas said other polls rely on the Internet, to which many immigrants have no access. He expected a high turnout: ''Immigrants are tired of being talked about and not being part of decisions.'' Labour, which has many candidates of migrant origin running for parliament, is popular among immigrants for its focus on inner-city problems like fighting poverty and unemployment.

In local elections in March, 80 per cent of immigrants voted for Labour, a study by the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies showed, reinforcing a broader swing to the left.

But Labour cannot rest on its laurels. Support for the party fell sharply among the country's large Turkish community after it dropped an election candidate in September for not accepting Ottoman Turkey's killing of Armenians as genocide.

Ahmet Azdural, director of the Inspraakorgaan Turken -- an umbrella organisation of Turkish groups, said immigrants were also unhappy that Labour had not done more to fight the centre-right government's tough new laws on integration.

''In the past Turks voted en masse for Labour. Now they are more critical,'' Azdural said.

In a reminder of the hard line the government has taken, the cabinet said on Friday it would seek to ban Muslim women wearing the burqa veil in public, a move that could mobilise the left.

Campaigning near Amsterdam's multi-ethnic Albert Cuyp market on Saturday, Labour leader Wouter Bos said there were more pressing issues to improve integration than a burqa ban and said he was confident of Turkish support despite the Armenia row.

''Most of the Turkish voters are very sensitive towards issues on poverty, on discrimination and there they know that the Dutch Labour party is traditionally their greatest ally.'' Reuters SB VV0937