One man came close, though. Towards the end of 2001, UM President Karl Dittrich stood a good chance. In fact, he was first on the municipal council’s short list. It looked like a done deal for the political scientist, who had joined the Faculty of Law as early as 1982 and since risen steadily through the ranks, all the way up to the Executive Board. In 1986, he became its “third member” (a position later rebranded as “Vice-President”); nine years later, he became university president. On 1 February 2002, he was meant to make the glorious leap from head of the university to head of the municipality.
MVV Maastricht
But that was never his highest ambition. Dittrich had once let slip that becoming chair of MVV Maastricht was at the top of his wish list. And in 1992, he had achieved just that, in addition to his university position. For a local, what could be better than running your beloved city’s football club? But the world of professional football is quite different from academia. When it turned out that an MVV bookkeeper had committed fraud, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) swooped in and uncovered a full-blown black money scandal. The entire MVV board spent several days behind bars at the local police station to keep them from coordinating their stories. Dittrich emerged a broken man. He hadn’t been aware of the illegal activities, but the prosecution pressed ahead with the case against the MVV board. Dittrich eventually agreed to a settlement to bring the matter to an end. “Unwise in hindsight”, he later said, as it cast a shadow of suspicion on him. From then on, with every step in his career – particularly towards the mayoralty – the headlines would practically write themselves: “Mayoral candidate spent time in jail”, that sort of thing.
Allegations
That was exactly what happened in November and December 2001. The local newspaper De Limburger and the national newspaper NRC Handelsblad didn’t just dig up the MVV scandal, but also threw in new allegations. The municipal council already knew about the former; it hadn’t stopped them from voting for Dittrich. But now, the term “construction fraud” entered the conversation. Back in 1991, a construction company had asked Dittrich to guide it through a five-year merger process, “one meeting every two months”. A few years later, UM hired the same company for a job in Randwyck. Did Dittrich have anything to do with it? No – that wasn’t how university procedures worked. But NRC didn’t buy that, even though UM, the University Council and former Rector Magnificus Job Cohen (then mayor of Amsterdam) all strongly denied any wrongdoing on Dittrich’s part. Cohen even said Dittrich “wasn’t that kind of man”.
And there was more. NRC reported a third claim that threatened Dittrich’s candidacy. In 1990, he had supposedly manipulated student enrolment figures in order to secure more government funding. The main source for this was a former UM administrator who had left under less-than-happy circumstances. Observant investigated the allegation by speaking to just about everyone who might have known about it, concluding that the story was pure fabrication.
Final straw
But for Dittrich, it was the final straw. He feared that stories questioning his integrity would continue to haunt him as mayor. He withdrew, and the number two on the candidate list, Gerd Leers, moved up to first place. Six months later, Dittrich left UM anyway for a senior management position in quality assurance in higher education.