João Varela (born 19 October 1974) is a Dutch journalist and former politician who served as an MP in the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

for the

Pim Fortuyn List The Pim Fortuyn List (, LPF) was a political party in the Netherlands that existed from 2002 to 2008 at a national level and was named after its eponymous founder Pim Fortuyn, a former university professor and political columnist. The party was ...

(LPF) from 2002 to 2006. He was the LPF's number two candidate during the 2002 general election and was elected in first place after the assassination of the LFP's leader

Pim Fortuyn Wilhelmus Simon Petrus Fortuijn, known as Pim Fortuyn (; 19 February 1948 – 6 May 2002), was a Dutch politician, author, civil servant, businessman, sociologist and academic who founded the party Pim Fortuyn List (Lijst Pim Fortuyn or LPF) in ...

Early life

Varela was born in

Cape Verde Cape Verde or Cabo Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country and archipelagic state of West Africa in the central Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about . These islands ...

in 1974 and was raised in a strict

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

family. At the age of six he moved to the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

with his parents. His father worked for the Van Nelle coffee company. Verela ran away from home and was subsequently fostered by a Dutch family. He was a semi-professional tennis player at a young age before studying an economics degree at

Erasmus University Rotterdam Erasmus University Rotterdam ( ; abbreviated as EUR) is a public research university located in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The university is named after Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, a 15th-century Christian humanist and theologian. Erasmus M ...

and was employed as a marketing manager for L’Oreal.

Political career

Varela became close friends with

during his studies at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He joined the newly created

in 2002 and offered his services as a parliamentary candidate. Varela was placed second on the party list for the 2002 general election at the personal recommendation of Fortuyn who also suggested that Varela would serve as minister for immigration if he was elected as Prime Minister. During the election campaign, Verela became a recognizable public face for the LPF through being a prominent ethnic minority candidate in the party. Fortuyn was assassinated in the run-up to the election but was still put forward as the posthumous number one candidate while Varela became the lead candidate by default. He was subsequently elected to the

. In parliament, Varela focused on issues such as social affairs, youth, migration, employment, finance, law and order, and economic affairs. He also supported reducing immigration, stricter measures to assimilate migrants and defended Fortuyn's views on Islam. However, he also supported granting pardons to existing illegal immigrants and asylum seekers if they met certain criteria such as knowledge of the Dutch language, economic skills and having no criminal history. Varela was not elected at the

2006 elections The following elections occurred in the year 2006. * Elections in 2006 * Electoral calendar 2006 * 2006 Acehnese regional election * 2006 American Samoan legislative election * 2006 Bahraini parliamentary election * 2006 Costa Rican presidential e ...

when the LPF lost all of its representation in parliament and retired from politics soon after. In 2006, he was also a candidate for

alderman An alderman is a member of a Municipal government, municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law with similar officials existing in the Netherlands (wethouder) and Belgium (schepen). The term may be titular, denotin ...

and deputy mayor of the Westland municipality, however the position was allocated to LPF politician Ben van der Stee.

After politics

After leaving the House of Representatives, Varela trained and began working as an accountant. He also works as a weekly columnist for the ''Financial Telegraaf'' magazine and as an ambassador for the ''Ambition by Sport'' charity for disadvantaged youth. He also appeared as a celebrity contestant in the first season ''Sterren Dansen Op Het IJs'' the Dutch spin off of

Dancing on Ice ''Dancing on Ice'' is a British television series broadcast from 2006 to 2014 and then from 2018 to 2025. It was presented by Holly Willoughby and Stephen Mulhern. Other previous hosts include Phillip Schofield and Christine Lampard. The series ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Varela, João 1974 births Living people Dutch financial writers Pim Fortuyn List politicians Dutch Roman Catholics Erasmus University Rotterdam alumni Dutch MPs 2002–2003 Dutch MPs 2003–2006 Dutch people of Cape Verdean descent Dutch columnists 21st-century Dutch journalists