Double Passports in the Government

[Andres]

First off, I assume the "State Secretary" is an elected politician, not an official (civil servant)?

A politician's legitimacy is provided by the electoral vote. In matters of national security, the UK does perform background security checks on its ministers (politicians in charge of a government department/govt business), as on it's officials.

Isn't it so that in a representative/parliamentary democracy, the members of the government aren't directly elected, only the members of Parliament are? And the Parliament choses the members of the government? Don't know about the Netherlands, but, technically, in Belgium it is possible to put people in government who aren't elected. If the majority of the Parliament e.g. elects X for minister of finances, then X will be minister of finances, doesn't matter if X took part in the elections or not.

If it works the same in the Netherlands as here, then I guess you'll have to look in your legislation and see if double nationality is forbidden or not; and change the legislation if you don't want somebody with two passports as minister/secretary of state.

Personally, I think it's reasonable to demand that in order to get such an important position at the head of the country, you need to have the nationality of the country. In case of double nationality, the candidate should be forced to chose one. We're talking of a member of the government, not the local low grade civil servant who puts stamps on documents from 9 am until 4 pm, with a lunch break and three coffee breaks.