Dutch recover their courage - by Nicholas Watt
Standing bolt upright in a tightly fitting suit, which showed the contours of a thick bullet-proof vest underneath, the armed bodyguard could barely contain the giggles. "Yes, you'd better keep that a secret," he joked with a Greenpeace protester when Guardian Unlimited asked Joris Thyssew how he had managed to infiltrate the Dutch prime minister's final election rally.
The friendly encounter on the steps of the main hall at the Keukenhof - the most famous tulip garden in the Netherlands - shows how traditional Dutch manners have returned to the Netherlands after four politically unstable years. Had Mr Thyssew absailed in front of the prime minister live on television a few years ago, when the Netherlands was in the throes of a bitter debate about its one million Muslims, he could have expected to have been bundled away in the manner of a British police operation.Today's general election is therefore likely to mark the end of the Dutch political malaise as Mr Balkenende's Christian Democrats, who were 16 points behind the opposition Labour party (PvdA) earlier this year, stage a remarkable political comeback.
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