The decisive rejection by Dutch voters of the EU constitution is not so much a rejection of the treaty itself as a slap in the face to political elites in Brussels and The Hague, analysts said Thursday.

They saw the 61.6 percent of Dutch voters who opposed the constitution in Wednesday's referendum as sending out a message that their governing classes were failing to connect with their constituents.

"I don't think this is a vote against Europe, but it is a motion of distrust against those in power," Hans van der Horst, author of the book "Understanding the Dutch", told AFP.

The Dutch vote, just three days after France also overwhelmingly shot down the text, is less about an anti-Europe sentiment than disenchantment with the political establishment both at home and in Brussels, observers agreed.

"This result shows that the large political parties do not represent the population," said Philip van Praag, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam.

Political and business scandals over the past decade have meant that "the authority of elites has been eaten away in a very broad sense.

"The people on the ground are looking up and saying that these people are liars and thieves and money-grabbers," van der Horst said.

The Dutch media on Thursday was virtually unanimous in blaming the failings of the country's politicians for the "no" vote.

"The result shows that there is a big discrepancy between what the governing political elite feel is good for the Netherlands and what the Dutch people themselves think," the financial daily Financieele Dagblad wrote.

"The result shows the wide chasm between voters and the political establishment which, expressed in these cold figures, is dramatic," center-left Christian daily Trouw agreed, insisting "the outcome is not only a rejection of the EU referendum ... it also a turning point in our democracy".

In the Netherlands, where the center-right coalition government and more than 80 percent of lawmakers had come out in favor of the constitution, the clear-cut voter rejection is the latest in a line of humiliating blows to the establishment.

The first came with the rise of populist leader Pim Fortuyn, who swept onto the political scene on a cloud of anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Only days after his murder in 2002, Fortuyn's party jumped out of nowhere to become the Netherland's second largest party.

This is the "third time the voters rebel against the political establishment in three years," Trouw wrote, referring to Fortuyn's win in Rotterdam municipal elections in March 2002 and his party's astounding results in the country's general elections two months later as the first two blows.

Not everyone agreed that Wednesday's vote was a punishment for the Dutch government, however.

"It's really ridiculous to separate domestic reasons for voting "no" from the European reasons," Paul Scheffer, a news commentator and widely respected authority on Dutch society, told AFP.

"It's an artificial separation because the goal of Europe is to mix domestic politics and foreign politics of the member states.

"I think they first and foremost really voted on their global ideas about Europe," he insisted, pointing out that many Dutch fear the bloc is expanding too quickly.

A poll during Wednesday by the Maurice de Hond institute revealed that only 11 percent of "no" voters were casting their ballot as a protest against the political situation in the Netherlands.

In contrast, 58 percent said their "no" was against developments within the European Union, such as the bloc's enlargement last year to include 10 mainly eastern European countries, while 30 percent of "no" voters said they did not agree with the content of the text itself.