The Board of the Machiavelli Foundation awarded the Machiavelli Award in May 2002 to Mayor Ivo Opstelten of Rotterdam because of his reconciliating and stabilizing performance when the tensions in the agitated days after the murder of Pim Fortuyn went to a boiling point. The mayor of Rotterdam demonstrated in that week the meaning of public leadership and publicity in crisis situations. There was empathy, there was sense of symbolism, it was good.