Published
Wed, Feb 12, 2020, 10:15
- Night mayor foundation chairman Ramon de Lima has stepped in temporarily, with new elections planned for this summer.
Amsterdam's current night mayor, Shamiro van der Geld, has not held his post since June 2019.
van der Geld, who was born in Amsterdam, left office last summer after less than 18 months into a three-year job, NAP Nieuws reports. He wasn't comfortable in the position, which was partly due to tensions between him and his team.
"If you appoint people with whom you have certain goals in mind and you don't achieve those goals, then that is particularly painful," van der Geld told NAP. "There was no trust on either side anymore."
Writing via Instagram last month, he said the decision to leave was "an important choice that I had to make with a lot of pain and effort, because it contained much more."
"It's a tough job, where you have to deal with different tasks," Night Mayor Foundation chairman Ramon de Lima, who has temporarily replaced van der Geld, told NAP. "There were many things [at once] and he found that difficult. We decided in June last year that he would no longer be the head of the board."
Despite leaving, Van der Geld is still involved with various projects connected to the N8BM A'DAM foundation, including one about boosting inclusivity in nightlife. He also still officially holds the title of night mayor, which he took from Mirik Milan, who held the position for six years, in February 2018. New elections are planned for June 2020.
Read van der Geld's Instagram post in full.
Listen to an interview with van der Geld from 2018, shortly after he came into office. (It starts at 35 minutes.)