Belgian Politics & Elections: Federal, regional & EP elections on June 9, 2024

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/PDelwit/status/1759995939962372237

Seat projection in latest polls. The PS in Brussels is getting hammered.

https://twitter.com/PDelwit/status/1760206632099680527

(Take the Flemish college with a pinch of salt because they can never poll the dutch-speakers in Brussels correctly)

[Zinneke]

Note that the Brussels poll in Laki's post is for the federal constituency hence why some Flemish and Francophone parties run joint lists (usually a Flemish Brusseleer in 3rd place)

[Zinneke]

Olivier Maingain has accused his DéFI presidency successor François De Smet’s cabinet of outright vote rigging when deciding the regional lists and has thrown the party into complete civil war, and its gaining a lot of media attention. Maingain is reportedly unhappy with the direction of “his” party under De Smet’s leadership, although its unclear if there is any ideological substance to this,  although rumors that De Smet is more keen on a right-wing alliance with the old enemy MR might be it. Maingain though just bangs on about how De Smet should listen to the local elected officials more instead of campaigning on vaster issues. The sad thing is that De Smet could have actually led a party with some interesting ideological zeal, away from outdated Francophone minority rights and more focused on reforming governance at Francophone level as a whole. But instead there are no interesting proposals, just typical baron politics.

 Anyway it’s another big boost for MR in the capital, where the topic of insecurity and public drug use is also in the headlines following 4 shootings. The only issue is that all it does for MR is run up the vote tally in the places you’d expect them to do well anyway. Their strategy of cosying up to the likes of Kir or other minority “community leaders” might actually be what pushes them over the line to first place.

[Zinneke]

A PTB/PVDA elected official in Brussels switches to MR, to even his great surprise

https://twitter.com/MR_officiel/status/1765041001393963327

I'm sure it has nothing to do with narrow communitarian/sectetian dog whistling from GLB (all while he retweets the Islamophobie French Right Twittersphere) and generic Brussels politician careerism from Handichi.

[Zinneke]

A few minor updates :

DierAninal, the most successful animal rights party in Belgium with its 1 seat in the Brussels Regional Chamber, has just lost that seat to Écolo : Victoria Autstraet will run on the green party's list next election (and its surprising given Ecolo BXL are pro-halal and kosher animals not being stunned before).

Agora, the other surprise minor party that won a seat, will only run at federal this time as their demand for citizen assembly type councils was partially adopted by the Brussels parliament.

The crisis in Défi has worsened to a point where Maingain has announced he will not run or participate in the campaign for the federal or regionals, only focusing on his commune in Autumn. He was expected to be a list pusher as his name recognition in Woluwe St Lambert gets them many votes (it is actually a semi-functioning commune in Brussels, which is a rarity). Given it's a kingmaker party of sorts since islts split with MR this will have an impact.

Dried Vanlangenhove, the guy who set up Schild en Vrienden, a neo-Nazi militant group, has been given a year's prison today for his hate speech actions. Pretty rare for politicians here to get prison time unless they've murdered someone (and even then...)

Bouchez's latest stunts are quite something: saying he'll leave Belgium if "things stay the same" (YOUR PARTY HAS BEEN AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL IN POWER FOR 25 YEARS), oh and welcoming not one but two criminals on his Brussels regional list.

PS meanwhile : Di Rupo doing strange tiktoks in his 70s, and Di Rupo fellow list pusher Luc Hennaert, a former magistrate, arguing that cocaine should be legalised and prisons abolished, even though he's campaigning for EU elections where none of that really matters. But then any attention is good attention.

[Zinneke]

DierAninal, the most successful animal rights party in Belgium with its 1 seat in the Brussels Regional Chamber, has just lost that seat to Écolo : Victoria Autstraet will run on the green party's list next election (and its surprising given Ecolo BXL are pro-halal and kosher animals not being stunned before).

Are other parties stricter on this subject?

Put it this way : MR and Défi are vocally more in favour of stunning animals. But like ECOLO, their actual parliamentarians vote according to confessional lines usually. Défi are the ones who pushed the vote.

In the Flemish college, Groen for example were unanimously in favour of stunning animals before ritual slaughter.

[Zinneke]

Elon Musk was openly backing DVL on twitter and now he can brag about it to all his inmates.

[Zinneke]

I think there a a increasing chance that Chez Nous will outperform polls

Bouchez covered the right-wing populists well up until the start of the campaign. But his recent actions have hardly been great in keeping that sort of voter : recruiting a PTB member of Moroccan origin just to tow the line to that community,lying about military service and saying that if nothing changes in Belgium he'd leave it (likely to Dubai knowing him because he just absolutely loves the kitsch glamourous lifestyle). So there's a definitely again a sense that efforts of creating a right wing populist electoral market are hindered by the fact that most political entrepreneurs seeking it are from bourgeois backgrounds with no connection to the voter pool that Chez Nous tries to go after (lumpen and 4chan posters)

A few minor updates :

DierAninal, the most successful animal rights party in Belgium with its 1 seat in the Brussels Regional Chamber, has just lost that seat to Écolo : Victoria Autstraet will run on the green party's list next election (and its surprising given Ecolo BXL are pro-halal and kosher animals not being stunned before).

Apparently, she had been expelled from DierAnimal in 2020, they lost their seat long ago.

Yeah she left during COVID I forgot. She isn't immediately joining ECOLO for legal reasons I think because there's still some sort of dispute. She's a bit of a free spirit as you can imagine but was obviously advised if she wanted to pursue a more high profile career she should join ECOLO.

[Zinneke]

So it's official, N-VA are running lists in Wallonia, their first head of list in Brabant Wallon is a guy known for being a troll on twitter :

https://twitter.com/PDelwit/status/1770480787147682254

Difficult to say whether they are half-arsing it to just get the money as Vlaams Belang did before in Hainaut, or if like 95% of the rest of the Belgian political class they hate Bouchez enough to just try anything to sabotage him. This is a big blow to MR given the last BW seat will likely be a close toss up between them and one of the other traditional Walloon parties.

[Zinneke]

Even less a chance they make it if N-VA run in all 5 Walloon Provinces.

[Zinneke]

I don't mind them splitting the vote of the right wing in Wallonia tbh.

You should, as increased turnout means that PTB-PVDA wins less seats.

Turnout isn't as big a factor in Belgian elections

[Zinneke]

Another far right European "patriot" caught helping a Chinese spy get a visa. This time the guilty party is Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Belang, most known for calling for a "White Europe" back in the day. But helping illegals come to Belgium, and supporting a country still nominally communist.

[Zinneke]

Another far right European "patriot" caught helping a Chinese spy get a visa. This time the guilty party is Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Belang, most known for calling for a "White Europe" back in the day. But helping illegals come to Belgium, and supporting a country still nominally communist.

And, yet, their opposition continues to be weak, instead of just calling them Chinees Belang.

They are way ahead of you. But then there is no opposition other than VB and PTB/PVDA

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/DGodefridi/status/1776150694124261533

The chief N-VA francophone candidate/troll on twitter is now calling out Vooruit because their posters resemble Stalinism and National Socialism all at once. Have to say along with the name change, logo change and the last party president's choice views on Romani,  he may have a point!

(But still Melissa )

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/lesoir/status/1778635667599167816

In which the most indebted of city-regions in Europe finds a way to claim 70k in expenses for their employees for going to golf course

[Zinneke]

As we approach to the elections the majorities across the board are slowly, inevitably crumbling. I already spoke earlier in the thread about how the Federal Vivaldi coalition was basically at a standstill with major reforms not being able to pass (the tax shift reducing charges on income in favour of increased VAT was blocked by the MR, who all parties in the Vivaldi, including Open VLD and De Croo, recognise as the ball and chain).

Now there is an effective falling of the Walloon government and the Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles government on the cards due to the reform of higher education (Décret Paysage) on the horizon and agreed in the negotiations for the formation of the Fédération (that deals with education).

The reform was pushed by MR and was wide ranging but it is the stricter requirements to pass the first year courses that is the key element of contention from the Francophone Students Union (the FEF, notoriously I should say, seen as a platform to an eventual promotion into PS and ECOLO cabinets, but still quite plural). They argue that thousands of students could potentially be impacted by the fact that they will be forced to cease their studies if they even failed one course from their first year program but continued to pass all of the others through the rest of the studies. They also believe that students still impacted by Covid lockdown should not be the generation to bear the brunt.

MR and university administrators in favour of the measure argue that too many students often treat higher education as simply a way to maintain their student status until their late 20s to be more employable : in Belgium the minimum wage is so high that for a young worker a student status allows them to be employed without the employer paying so much tax on it. MR also are heavily targeting the angry boomer vote that believes that standards should be stricter for everyone except themselves. University administrators (some but not all) are frustrated at potential cuts when they believe many students are simply costing more than they are producing by being enrolled.  I personally have witnessed first hand people in my circle of friends registering for courses just to be able to enter the labour market, without attending a single course, but then this is a wider issue in Wallonia-Brussels - too high cost of labour,  bad transition from studies to work in general, denigration of technical schools despite massive shortages in technical jobs.

Anyway, the pressure from the FEF meant ECOLO and PS decided to bring back the Minister’s legislation to the fore yesterday and amend it, passing it in subcommittee with help of the PTB. MR and Les Engagés, in perhaps a hint at a future alliance, both wanted to maintain the text as it is. A furious Pierre-Yves Jeholet (the MR Minister-President of the Federation) has come out this morning essentially announcing that the government was now a “current affairs” one, where alternative majorities are now possible. This also opens the door to the potential Red-Red-Green in Wallonia, which the N-VA is practically begging for by running spoiler candidates there just so they can justify the Brown-Yellow-(Orange/Blue) government in Flanders.

In other news, Emir Kir, the mayor of Brussels commune Saint-Josse-Ten-Nood, shut down an international “National Conservatives” conference yesterday. This caused a mini-commotion at federal level as Prime Minister De Croo insisted that the right to assembly was constitutional. Kir is an obvious hypocrite given he was kicked out of the PS for having far right Turkish mayors visit his commune as if they were respected dignitaries, but he came out this morning saying it was a matter of public order. The speakers included Farage, Suella Braverman, but also people like Filip Dewinter who are more traditional neo-fascists (unless its about receiving money from China for fake visas).

Overall the campaign is noted for its inability to set clear themes. Last time two real events marked both sides of the linguistic communities : in Flanders it was the brutal murder committed by a released felon that focused on the lax justice system and helped VB, and in Wallonia and Brussels the climate protests were top of the agenda. In this campaign, there have yet to be real events like this and instead it revolves around very particular, technical issues like the “Décret Paysage” above or the GoodMove in Brussels, that are then simplified to get the social media hits. All the polls show though that what people care about the most is buying power. Analysts note that the Vivaldi parties are probably doing this campaign strategy on purpose because they know they have very little idea how to fix the buying power problem and that everybody black balls some of the obvious “fixes” (MR blackballs the tax shift, PS blackballs spending cuts etc). This leaves an absolute boulevard for the extreme parties to talk about cost of living issues, and is another explainer as to why they are so high in the polls. Debates in general seem to have very little effect here compared to the Netherlands.

[Zinneke]

the tax shift reducing charges on income in favour of increased VAT was blocked by the MR, who all parties in the Vivaldi, including Open VLD and De Croo, recognise as the ball and chain

Why on Earth would MR be opposed to that? Are many of their members the sort of small businessmen who get their €€€ from Frenchies and Germans shopping for cheaper cigarettes/alcohol/​petrol/​whatever?

The tax shift basically isn't a direct tax cut. It's idea is to make up the losses of tax revenue with an increase on taxes on things like sugar, football tickets and gambling. About 2 weeks ago Humo, a Flemish investigative paper, explored the close relationship that GLB had with the gambling companies, including the fact that Ladbrokes sponsored his rally racing and the football club he currently runs alongside his 10 other mandates(that he also hilariously, in true GLB narcissistic fashion, changed the logo of his football club to look more like himself). When Francophone media picked it up, GLB called them to intimidate the journalists and remove the articles. The gambling industry's lobby is also headed by Damien Thery, an ex-MR bruiser. Safe to say the links between MR and certain industries that were "targeted" are very close. VLD are much more independent-minded and ideological.

[Zinneke]

I know I have a penchant for cynicism and conspiracy but there's so many smaller parties that are essentially spoiler parties propped up by the Vivaldi/establishment parties and this one ticks a lot of boxes in that regard. I'll go into more detail when I post a run down of the parties.

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/hadjalahbib/status/1787443758121754750

https://twitter.com/pdsutter/status/1781291115544465730

Proud to be Belgian and not any of my genocidal neighbours, in particular the UK and Germany but also the Netherlands.

Of course one fake nationality ("Belgian") would support another fake nationality ("Palestinian").

You are the only person on this forum to Stan for Liz Truss, even putting her in your Sig next to your set of heroes and genocidal tyrants.

Own up and put her back on your Sig next to the flag and nationality that has existed since 1707, while the Belgae and Philistines (no, not your Mum and Dad, the early Palestinians) were cited by the Ancient Romans.

Go back to your crayons little boy.

[Zinneke]

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2024/05/10/minister-van-energie-tinne-van-der-straeten-groen-wil-klacht-i/

Secretary of Energy Tinne Van Der Straeten (Green) will file a complaint after accusing chairman of MR (liberals) of slander and defamation and general bullying.

Specifically GLB. He is the one targeted. By pretty much everyone except VLD (although De Croo hates him) and CD&V (because Mahdi and him are very similar in believing their own hype). But the nature of Belgian politics means Bouchez will be likely indispensable to work with next federal parliament.

[Zinneke]

https://www.rtbf.be/article/le-rassemblement-national-de-marine-le-pen-attaque-en-justice-le-parti-d-extreme-droite-wallon-chez-nous-11373633

RN are attacking Chez Nous in the courts due to branding issues...I feel like I've heard this track before...

[Zinneke]

So these elections are coming sooner rather than later so i'll just post some prose I wrote detailing the Francophone parties. Before that though, an interesting study about how all the parties have evolved since 2019 :

https://www.rtbf.be/article/plus-a-gauche-ou-plus-a-droite-comment-ont-evolue-les-partis-politiques-belges-depuis-2019-11374131

https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/17974068/embed?auto=1


I’m more in tune with Brussels than Wallonia or the rest of the country these days. I’m not really following what the new parties in Wallonia propose and because the socio-economic factor still dominates in Wallonia people can guess what the major parties stand for, as they pretend they can solve complex global political economy problems from the Elysette in Namur - a major factor in this is their overreliance on copying French political issues as wedge issues too.

 Wallonia:
I would point out that MR Wallonia under Bouchez is now much more right-wing on a host of social issues and pretty much aligned with N-VA now on the economic issues (reduce public expenditure, reduce taxes across the board, protect tax loopholes for sitting capital like french tax exiles and allow indexation of rents but not labour). But the core focus is to point to Brussels as an example of what happens if MR are not in government at Regional level. Bouchez basically stays relatively quiet about Walloon-centric issues due to his party's implantation there.


Les Engagés is also a lot more to the right on the economic issues now, but as per usual they tend to just boot into touch whenever there needs to be any controversial issue to be dealt with and just repeat bland statement about needing a balance, but they’re definitely angling a more “people’s party’ christian democratic platform while also talking about renewal which is laughable for anyone who can see through a party rebranding. But hey it seems to have worked.

PS are playing the same pied piper tunes to get the traditional socialist vote out : tax on the rich, stop stigmatizing the unemployed, and Pierre-Yves Dermagne, a rising star in the party, has ruled out state reform, although I imagine due to the unsustainable costs of the multi-layered governance model they will cave in to some mergers.

PTB/PVDA : see Laki’s post, in addition in Francophone Belgium in general they will focus on the international politics : Palestine, “Western hypocrisy in Ukraine”, and so on. This will help them massively with the Muslim and crank (or both) vote vs the PS.

ECOLO want to do ECOLO things : phase out nuclear quicker than the other parties, renewal investment, focus on environmental protection. However, there is a growing inevitable chasm between Nollet and the old school ECOLOs and his latest Brussels wing-woman, Maouane, who wants to focus on social struggles like Israel-Palestine or the veil.

Brussels

The Regional election in Brussels is focussing on several key local issues that have arisen in the last term. One inevitable problem though is that there are local elections in Autumn, and the Francophone parties especially don’t want to reveal their entire hand until then. As an example, there’s a newfound fashionable football club with the Eurocrats, Dansaert Vlamingen, and other assorted hipsters that wants to build a stadium in Forest, and has Regional support for it, but locally, due to the neighborhood associations and generic angry boomers that count more during local elections, it is facing resistance. So you can imagine how dysfunctional this will all be in terms of propositions for urban planning. Brussels Region will likely not have a functioning government before the locals. But then this might be extended to pretty much every level of power in Belgium because no one in the Patriocracy will want to take responsibility for controversial alliances until they secure their ultimate cash cow, which is the communes/gemeenten.

It’s safe to say the key issues at Regional level are :

“GoodMove”, the plan that was passed under a PS-cdH administration to reduce car dependence in the Capital - which is one of the most congested cities in Europe - is now very controversial among generic blockheads who like to go vroom vroom (they can come from all sorts of social backgrounds - its a strange alliance of Ucclois NIMBYists, PTB activists and St Josse Ten Nood Turkish drug dealers). But it seems to be a cleavage issue and now the PS under Ahmed Laaouej is against it despite passing the laws themselves, with ECOLO doubling down on it.

Insecurity and social problems : the increase since Covid and Ukraine crisis in open crack use, in homelessness, gang banger shootings US-style due to French Algerian gangs coming in, and refugees having to sleep in tents means Brussels “feels” less safe and even the most staunch ECOLO voter probably notices that and blames the local authorities. Also linked to this debate is whether the police zones should be scrapped for 1 single police zone.

Housing : Brussels is finally catching up with the rest of the big European cities in facing a housing crisis that up until now it managed due to the way it is laid out and partitioned (with the poor living inside the city and the rich tending to move outside of it and commuting - by car).


The debt : Brussels had its credit rating downgraded recently and clearly needs to reduce public spending, with white elephant projects like Metro 3 being called into question over whether the costs are not outweighing the future benefits. But obviously parties are mostly arguing about where the spending cuts in public services come from. The Flemish parties focus on the police zones and the communes but neglect to mention their own institution is over bloated relative to their population size. The Francophones are even more shameless in their defense of the 19 commune system and size of political salaries and the myriad of nonprofits that politicians sit on the board on. Also a key cleavage issue is whether to have a “kilometer tax” aka a congestion charge for commuters from outside Brussels as a way to compensate the fact that these commuters pay virtually no direct tax to the regional budget but cause expensive externalities like pollution (causing a living standard decrease of on average 10 years of the Brussels citizen vs a suburbanite) or the maintenance of the car tunnels.

You’ll notice that the issues are not only linked but also pretty standard for most Western European city issues. With Brussels though due to its international population you can add international politics to the fray because many voters from certain backgrounds will vote purely on issues such as Israel-Palestine, and also vote based on communitarian lines. The PS are already well documented in presenting candidates that act as vote banks for certain communities, but the MR this election have pulled out all the stops : Mapamka, who does well with the Evangelical Sub-Saharan African demographic (ex-cdH and he was being investigated for misuse of funds), or Handichi the ex-PTB guy, or even now close relations with people previously associated with Emir Kir, the Armenian Genocide denier. So don’t let anyone tell you its just the PS that does this kind of thing, they are all at it in Brussels.

It is also safe to say that, outside standard cost of living issues, Brussels' acute problems are sort of a key battleground for the nationwide election. Migration crisis epicenter is in Brussels, the debate over traffic and the company car and its dominance mostly involves Brussels, etc.






In terms of small parties in Belgium, Laki may already have mentioned some of these:

Agora took a surprising seat in the Brussels Regional parliament last team. They argue for an Athenian style democracy where citizens are chosen at random to represent the people in citizens assemblies and more referendums are done. They are not running to defend their seat in the Regional parliament, instead running on a federal list in Brussels.

“Anticapitalistes” : Trotskyite randos who have one time French Presidential candidate Philippe Poutou on their European list. They want to exit NATO, the IMF and the WHO.

Blanco : Protest party. They basically say that the “blanco” vote (i.e blank ballot) should be represented in parliament in Belgium as currently protest voting benefits the big parties the most (I’ve explained how previously in the thread). There’s rumours they are being pushed heavily by the Francophone media (DH, La Libre) mostly to avoid right-wing protest voting PTB as a way to annoy the political class. They have more conspiratoral right-wing undertones for sure

B.U.B - Belgische Unie, Union Belgique. They advocate for a unitary belgium, including reclaiming EU powers and giving them back to Belgium.

Collectif Citoyen - like Agora and Blanco this is another small party trying to hold the rancid Belgian political class to account. They managed to get their list present in most provinces and Brussels though.

L’Unie : similar to BUB but less EU-sceptique, and driven by young people


Lutte ouvrière : another trotskyite sect

Reprise en Main Citoyenne : conspiracy party driven by the Kairos publication which is your pretty standard Gillet Jaunes/Antivaxx nutjob publication


VOLT : you’ve probably read about VOLT by now - they are young people hoping for a federal Europe. In Brussels regional elections their platform can basically be summed up as a euroexpat interest party so the usual insufferable entitlement is present throughout their political programme - English as an official language

Plan B : A Brussels-centric party led by ex-Défi "rising star" Christophe Magdalijns but also with Flemish speakers in it. It is another “citizens list” that focuses on the key issues that Brussels is facing that I mentioned above : wanting to clean up the waste disposal, wanting to simplify the institutional model of Brussels, balancing the budget in 5 years, wanting to focus on what they call “inter-culturalism” as opposed to “multiculturalism” as they feel Brussels is too segregated in terms of its different demographic clusters. It has an electoral alliance with MR though, so it clearly feels like a way for MR to get a hold on certain Défi communes like Auderghem, where Magdalijns has a strong personalist vote.

Transparence : Another protest movement against the political class formed by a whistle blower in the public services. He is more crankish than the others though.

Team Fouad Ahidar : an Ex-Vooruit member who was kicked out (or left, I forget which) for some choice views on Palestine. He is basically relying on his personalist vote and a DENK-style pro-small shopkeeper rhetoric. They have an electoral agreement with the Dutch-speaking PVDA branch of Brussels, so I think this was also a way to spoil the Vooruit vote in Brussels and get them eventually on the PVDA side.

Voor U : another split from a traditional flemish party, Voor U is the formation of Else Ampe, who left Open VLD after being looked over for jobs and also finding the entire culture of the party cliquey (her main contestation was seeing ex-EU Commissioner Karel De Gucht’s son parachuted into Brussels as a carpet bagger in order to secure a mandate so fair play to her). SHe is a bit of a nutjob, a genuine village idiot at times but manages to get a lot of media attention for her eccentricities.

Viva Palestina : a list formed by a Lebanese-Belgian who wants to focus solely on the Israel war on Gaza. Like I said it’s likely a list set up purely to spoil the PTB vote because the traditional parties are sh**t scared that PTB will hoover up pro-Palestine single issue voters, which in a great advertisement for how bad Belgium’s integration model has been, will be numerous.

Chez Nous : Discussed earlier in the thread, a far right party formed by ex-National Front of Belgium but notoriously on bad terms with the French National Front/Assembly. They actually went through legal hoops to present themselves as the legal successor of it, before the usual types online tell you that Chez Nous is actually a democratic right-wing populist party or some other glossy lie. It cannot therefore be compared to Listes Destexhe or the PP, although they were likely to hoover up their votes until N-VA decided to go on their patch and run a classic bourgeois populist candidate in Godefridi. Also, they are allied with VB in Brussels and have an agreement not to stand in Brussels in order to get Francophones who want to vote far right to vote VB.

In Brussels there will be a few other lists on the Dutch-speaking electoral college that are exclusive to it (like Viva Palestina which was sponsored by an Open VLD member in order to get on, I am not sure if she did it out of solidarity or to spoil the PTB vote). Controversially, DierAnimal and Transperencia did not find enough signatures (although Transperancia will run on the Francophone side) and they complained that the process is too difficult, since you need signatures from people with Dutch-speaking ID cards and many Dutch-speakers in Brussels don’t even have one (whereas someone like me does to get all the perks…vintage Belgian complexity rewarding those who find the loopholes vs those who don’t). The traditional parties do everything to block smaller parties and protect the partriocracy. Go figure.



Here are some electoral tests or info about party standpoints per level of government or region (use google translate obviously, but if you have a question over a specific issue i'm happy to answer):

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/kies24/stemtest/

https://www.rtbf.be/test-electoral

https://www.demorgen.be/specials/stemchecker/

https://www.bruzz.be/kieswijzer (for Brussels FL parties)

https://www.rtbf.be/article/quels-partis-portent-vos-idees-quel-est-votre-profil-d-electeur-faites-le-test-electoral-de-la-rtbf-11360416#/europeen/intro

[Zinneke]

🦁 Flanders: Vooruit 72%, NVA 58%, Groen 58%, openVLD 56%, VB 54%, PVDA 54%, cd&V 47%.
🐓 Wallonia: LE 79%, MR 64%, PS 63%, Ecolo 60%, Défi 57%, PTB 49%.

Strange that you have LE first in your Walloon electoral test and CD&V last...usually to have Les Engagés first you just have to answer "I don't know" to every question.

[Zinneke]

It's funny how Prévot spending three years saying as little as possible is now massively paying off with the 'I've done no research but I like nice things and I'm sick of PS/MR' vote.

Sorry, did I say funny, I meant the other thing

It's just disgusting how one term in opposition and a rebranding, plus standard populist drivel (basically chasing after GLB's talking points) can make people forget what they really are the Belgian equivalent of the Centrão with added crankism. Also "funny" is how their new shiny little ideal son in law in Brussels, Christophe de Beukelaer, is part of some weirdo "Yes Now" cult :  https://www.blast-info.fr/articles/2024/la-petite-secte-qui-monte-en-europe-1-le-politique-le-gourou-et-les-extraterrestres-8r97_hscQEGV0G2-gVhwBg

But then I now just consider all the Vivaldi parties + Défi and LE as one big establishment blob that needs removing.