Splits threaten to rip apart Fortuyn party

Almost two months after the murder of the anti-immigration campaigner Pim Fortuyn, the party he left behind will try to stave off a formal split and prepare for a key role in a new Dutch government today.

Riven by divisions, rocked by a row over its leader, and lacking a party organisation or coherent policy programme, Lijst Fortuyn (LPF) will attempt to paper over the cracks at a party congress in Rotterdam.

If, as expected, a compromise between the warring factions prevents the formal division of the party, the LPF will take its place in a coalition government whose policy programme will go before parliament tomorrow.

But the intense politicking has incensed Marten Fortuyn, Pim Fortuyn's older brother, who threatened last week to ban the party from using the family name unless the dispute was ended.

The row also raised questions over the future of the LPF. Jan Peter Balkenende, the prime minister-in-waiting and Christian Democrat leader, has pieced together a coalition programme with the Liberals and the LPF after more than five weeks of talks, focusing on reform of the health and social security system and a tightening of the immigration laws.

Given the amateurish behaviour of the LPF there is some doubt as to how long the coalition can last.

The answer depends on whom it appoints to ministerial office and whether it takes advantage of its constitutional right to nominate those from outside parliament.

Speculation is rife that high- profile lawyers or industrialists will represent the LPF, giving the new government a better chance of prospering.

The continuing ructions illustrate the difficulties faced by Mat Herben, the successor to Mr Fortuyn, in getting a grip on a party without a proper machine or a consistent ideology.

Until Mr Fortuyn was shot five times at a media park in Hilversum on 6 May, the LPF was little more than a vehicle for the charismatic, shaven-headed iconoclast and anti- immigration campaigner.

Mr Herben, who emerged as parliamentary leader in the days after the Fortuyn murder, has been involved in an increasingly tense confrontation with two other senior figures, John Dost and Peter Langendam, who were members of a party executive that was formed in February.

In June, after Mr Fortuyn's death, Mr Dost and Mr Langendam helped to appoint an LPF interim executive. Now they have provoked a crisis by trying to dismiss it.

In the ensuing row, Mr Herben backed a group of MPs who threatened to break away – taking the party name with them – unless Mr Dost and Mr Langendam backed down.

Under the compromise likely to be agreed today, Mr Langendam and Mr Dost will remain as the party's executive committee until 30 November, while the day-to-day power is transferred to a new management team.

Meanwhile Mr Herben, a former editor of the Dutch Defence Ministry's publications and LPF spokesman, has been embroiled in two controversies. He has been accused of making his original application to join the party because he wanted to influence policy in favour of an American-backed defence contract.

He is also said to have claimed that Mr Fortuyn took drugs. Despite these problems many observers believe Mr Herben has played a difficult hand well, conducting negotiations sensibly with the two likely coalition partners.

One Dutch official argues: "Herben came into public view as a result of the murder of Pim Fortuyn and there is some jealousy within the LPF that, at the end of the day, someone else walked away with the crown jewels."

An animal rights activist, aged 32, has been charged with Mr Fortuyn's murder, but the motivation for the killing remains opaque.