Balkenende's fourth cabinet in the last eight years fell apart on Saturday morning after the Labour Party pulled out of government, insisting it could not support a NATO request to extend the Dutch mission past this year.
Dutch troops are likely to leave Afghanistan this year as planned, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said on Sunday, as early polls showed his rivals benefiting from the government's collapse over the mission.
NATO had asked the Netherlands, among the top 10 contributing nations to the mission, to look into the possibility of a longer stay.
"If nothing else will take its place, then it ends," Balkenende told Dutch current affairs television programme Buitenhof in an interview on Sunday.
The 2,000-strong Dutch contingent is due to start leaving the Afghan province of Uruzgan in August and Balkenende bemoaned the impact of the pullout on the standing of the Dutch internationally. "The image of the Netherlands is far from flourishing abroad. They do not understand what we are doing," he said.
"The moment the Netherlands says as the sole and first country that we will no longer have activities at the end of 2010, it will raise questions in other countries and this really pains me."
Polls favour pullout
However, the first poll to come out following the cabinet's fall indicated that the public supported Labour's move to end both the mission and the current government.
The Maurice de Hond poll showed Labour gaining four seats in the next parliament to 19 compared with a week ago. Balkenende's Christian Democrats (CDA) lost one seat, to 26. However, the CDA still leads the poll, with Labour a firm fifth.
Balkenende's personal support, however, is much less than that of his party. The poll showed only 16% support for Balkenende as the next prime minister.
More clarity on the next government is expected this week when the leaders of the fallen cabinet and other top officials meet Queen Beatrix on Monday to discuss next steps.
A general election is widely expected to be held in May or June. In the meantime, the parties will also be campaigning aggressively for municipal elections on 3 March.
Balkenende said there was a constitutional possibility that elections would not be held until the originally scheduled May 2011 date, but added that this was a matter for the Queen's advisers and the political leaders in parliament.
"We will get elections, a new government will come and then it will be a question of making the Netherlands stronger and let's put our energy into that," Balkenende said.
Budgets over Afghanistan
Labour leader Wouter Bos, also the incumbent finance minister, is already making the budget and not Afghanistan the main issue for those elections.
"I think this will be the big theme in the next few months," Bos said in an interview on Dutch current affairs programme Nova on Saturday night.
Some 20 panels are supposed to present the results of a "taboo-free" review of the budget soon. The aim is to find up to 40 billion euros in budget cuts to rein in the deficit, which is expected to top 6% of gross domestic product this year.
The Dutch government has already pledged to its European counterparts that the deficit will come down 50 to 75 basis points a year, every year, from 2011 through 2013.
The new government will have to present its 2011 budget on 21 September, leaving it relatively little time to prepare, but Bos said much of the work had already been done.
"In many ways we had already prepared the 2011 budget. We were smart to prepare measures for next year when we were discussing the crisis measures for 2010," Bos said.
(EurActiv with Reuters.)
