The Great Belgian Thread

[The Mikado]

Laïcité now roughly translating as 'making it very clear to the darkies that they don't belong here'.

From its old meaning of "Keep the Papists away from our kids!"

[Insula Dei]

Today CD&V leader Beke presented his report on the Linguistic (best translation of the French/Dutch 'Communautaire') problems in the formation to the king. Everyone expects he will now assign either De Wever as informateur or Di Rupo as formateur. Probably Di Rupo though. Lately De Wever has seemed eager to get to the point of having a government.

New elections seem very unlikely right now as there have been leaks from the palace establishing that the king had clealry stated to all party leaders that he would not sign the writ for another election. This also seems to be the last possible date to call an election untill September, as Belgium doesn't do Summer elections. Meaning we'll have at least 3 more months of drama (or, you know, a government).

[Insula Dei]

PS-leader Elio Di Rupo was appointed as formateur by the King today. His mission is very clearly to form a government. I feel sort of hopefull. A Prime Minister Di Rupo would be one of the best things to come out of Belgian politics in the past 5 years or so.

If Di Rupo does become PM, he'll be the first Walloon and the first socialist to hold that post since Leburton in 1980 (Leburton's reign was a bit of a failure though). He'll also be one of the first openly gay/immigrant Heads Of State or Government in Europe if not the world.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Iceland (of all places) beat you to it.

[Verily]

First openly gay man, though, unless you count that guy who was interim PM in Norway (I think it was Norway) for four days a while ago.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes, that's true. First openly bow-tie wearing for quite a while as well, I suspect.

[Insula Dei]

Sometimes I forget just how awfull Belgian politics can get

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is now asking for the resignation of Justice minister Stefaan De Clerck (,who's a despicable failure, filthy rich and represents the worst form of politician Belgium seems to produce in sizeable quantities) after De Clerk's remarks on the ongoing debate about amnesty for the 'collaborateurs' of WWII. (Yeah, that's been picked up again by the Senate, ).

De Clerck had said that it was time to 'forgive and forget' about the collaboration. Which is a pretty awfull quote no matter what you're position about the issue is. In the mean time Wouter Beke and De Clerck himself have stated that he meant that we should try to have a katharsis about the issue 'without minimalizing the facts'. Right,...

But it is nice to see the forgiving side of de Clerck whose last encounter with scandal came when he had an ex-gangster on parole re-arrested for very unconvincing reasons. Why the man had been convicted in the first place? Partly because of his involvement in the abduction of a certain Anthony De Clerck, a nephew of none other than...Stefaan De Clerck!

Before that De Clerck had also led the CD&V on the shiny path towards nationalism and to another crushing defeat in the 2003 election. He also had been forced to resign as Justice Minister in the Dehaene government after the escape of Marc Dutroux.

[YL]

Guardian/Le Monde article on the amnesty story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/24/belgium-crisis-nazi-collaboration-amnesty

Can someone explain SP.a's behaviour?

Last paragraph:

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[Insula Dei]

Guardian/Le Monde article on the amnesty story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/24/belgium-crisis-nazi-collaboration-amnesty

Can someone explain SP.a's behaviour?

The sp.a only voted to bring the bill on the Senate floor for debate, I'd be very, very surprised if they voted to pass it. If they did though that would be the end of any sense of allegiance I've got left for the party. The sad truth is that all Flemish parties seem to have decided that living a shadow life as the pets of the N-VA for now is better than having to take the risk of being the ones blamed for 'breaking the Flemish front'. I think this is stupid, even with purely electoral considerations in mind.

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[/quote]

'Commentators' in the international press have been believing that for 4 years now. That still doesn't mean it's a real option. Flemish independence would be very, very painfull to Flanders, as it would cut its ties to Brussels, which generates a lot of Flemish wealth. Only the craziest separatists would back such a procedure.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Longer than four years, but, yeah, it has become the consensus of the self-styled 'hard headed realists' amongst press commentators in recent years.

[Insula Dei]

Things are heating up here as the PS and the N-VA seem set to clash on the economy. Earlier in the week the so-called 'monitoring commitee' of high-placed civil servants had indicated that the amount of money  the next government would have to cut or raise was 22 Billion rather than the 17 Billion we've been hearing about for the past year or so, thus creating pressure on the parties to form a government. (One could argue that was the whole point of their report)
Today the European Commision published a list of recommendations for the Belgian government, which effectively was an all-out attack on the Welfare state, proposing to raise the retirement age, to lower the costs of wages, and to end the automatical linking of the consumer index to wages, which is at the core of Belgian employment policies. The report was very warmly received by N-VA and OpenVLD, and very reluctantly by the PS. The SP.a failed to really stand out by having an opinion.
I can't see how a government can be formed with parties that disagree so vehemently on almost everything and most commentators agree by now predicting an autumn election.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Will Belgium have a goverment ever again?

[freek]

Today is the 1 year anniversary of the elections of 13 June 2010.



Flanders poll by VRT

The bar on the left is the result of the elections of June 2010. N-VA support keeps increasing.

[Insula Dei]

Yes, 1 year on and still no government.

PM Leterme sneered at the negotiators today in the Dutch newspaper Trouw saying that winning elections is nice, but that they should really be able to look beyond their own interests. Oh the irony.

[Hash]

What are the polls looking like on the other side of the linguistic border?

[Insula Dei]

What are the polls looking like on the other side of the linguistic border?

Not much change, though we had a freak one a couple of months back that showed cdH an PS losing some terrain to the MR, and an ascendant FN. I'd still predict that both N-VA and PS would pick up some seats if elections were tomorrow.

[Insula Dei]

New negotiations between the N-VA and CD&V and OpenVLD about the formation of a 'Flemish Front'. ugh.

[SmokingCricket]

New negotiations between the N-VA and CD&V and OpenVLD about the formation of a 'Flemish Front'. ugh.

Forgive me for being uninformed, but what sort of impact would that have on the formation of a government?

[Insula Dei]

New negotiations between the N-VA and CD&V and OpenVLD about the formation of a 'Flemish Front'. ugh.

Forgive me for being uninformed, but what sort of impact would that have on the formation of a government?

It would mean that both the CD&V and the OpenVLD would become effectively sattelites of the N-VA as far as the formation is concerned, I suppose. But then, those parties already were behaving as if they were. So the only change would be that there would be strictly no change in the negotiations.

I must say that in a perverted sort of way, I'm highly amused by the CD&V's current situation. They clearly are scared to death of a centre-right government which would attack the welfare state, and yet they are unable to end the strangle-hold the N-VA has over them.

[Insula Dei]

The last week or so has surely been interesting.

First and foremost, Bart Dewever and FDF-leader Olivier Maingain have illustrated once more that a government with the N-VA and the MR would be a match made in heaven, after Maingain called the N-VA 'radically tatcherite, the final result of conservatism and egotism'. Showing off his great rhetorical skills, De Wever replied by insinuating that Maingain should perhaps start using his medecines again, which didn't go down too well with Maingain, who now compared De Wever to Viktor Orban and Haider. All this resulted in some degree of panic at MR Headquarters, where Charles Michel sort of reprimanded Maingain, presumably while praying to his masonic gods that this infortunate affair would not be problematic for his lovefest with the N-VA on the economy, or, even worse, result in the FDF leaving the MR and in the process crushing all hope of ever again being the No.1 in Wallonia.

And then some rag also chose today to publish some text messages they had somehow received, which supposedly prove that a) Yves Leterme has a secret lover or at least had one in late 2009 and b) that he tried to get her a job at the Foreign Ministry when he was Foreign Affairs minister. This is actually probably true as Leterme seems to have had more luck than anything else so far when it comes to semi-scandals coming out. On at least two occasions his Twitter account featured messages which quite clearly weren't meant to be read by most of the people who wound up reading them. The guy seems to be worse at these things than Anthony Weiner.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ah, Belgium. That strangely high density of Surrealists makes sense, doesn't it?

[Insula Dei]

The Maingain-De Wever disagreement seems to be spilling out of control after Maingain called De Wever a negationist today. Maingain really went the full distance in an interview with Le Soir today, referring to De Wever's meeting with Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002, his presence on the funeral of Karel Dillen, who founded the Vlaams Blok, and his 'negationist remarks'. Those accusations of negationism date back to 2007 when the francophone writer and columnist Pierre Mertens attacked De Wever over his own remarks about collaboration of the Antwerp Municipal Authority in 1940-1945, argueing that Antwerp was a victim of the occupators itself. These remarks were an attack by De Wever on Antwerp mayor Patrick Janssens (SP.a), who had issued an apology for the collaboration of the Antwerp Police Force and administration (among others).

Personally I consider De Wever's remarks beyond tasteless, especially since there is the simple fact that the Brussels Administration refused collaboration and that 'only' a few hundred of the Brussels Jews were murdered during the Shoah, whereas the Antwerp Administration did collaborate, for whatever reasons they may have had for that, and that tens of thousands of Antwerp Jews were murdered as a result. The degree to which the Shoah was successful in the Low Countries (even worse in the Netherlands), compared to for example Scandinavia, is a historical fact, and De Wever trying to diminish that for cheap political gain is on the edge of nauseating. Everybody knows he wants to be the next mayor of Antwerp, but should he really use every occasion he gets to attack Janssens, even when sensitive issues like this are involved?

That said, I do wonder what Maingain thinks he’s doing. I can’t see Charles Michel being amused by this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the MR likes power more than it likes the FDF, even if the consequences of dropping the FDF would be pretty damning for their electoral profile, especially in Brussels.

[Insula Dei]

Slightly better news now, as we should get ready for the one and only Flemish Socialist Leadership Election.

Incumbent leader Caroline Gennez today announced that she will not stand for re-election. Gennez was handpicked as leader by her predecessor Johan Vandelanotte in 2007. She won a tumultuous leadership election against left-wing firebrand Erik De Bruyn, with closer than expected numbers (66-33 or something) and generally never really managed to control the party. Her leadership also was clouded by the clumsy way she tried to eliminate Frank Vandenbroucke, the party's most popular official, from his ministerpost in the wake of the 2009 regional elections. She never really became popular either. In full, it seems safe to assume that her disappearance is a semi-good case for the party.


The obvious heir to the throne is Bruno Tobback, member of the Chamber of Representatives. Tobback is the son of party monument Louis Tobback, who led the party back in the 1980s and 1990s and who to this day is the mayor of Leuven. This might seem like a bad case of nepotism, but one should remember how incredibly small the Belgian political genepool is. Right now, almost the entire young generation of the OpenVLD consists out of the sons of former ministers, leaders,...
Tobback is one of the more charismatic Belgian politicians and certainly one of the better speakers in parliament. Also, he strikes me as pretty acceptable on the issues.


One unexpected challenger might be the current mayor of Ghent, Daniel Termont, who seems to have been on a bit of a charm offensive lately. Termont is at least being floated around by some analysts who supposedly know what they're talking about. Termont doesn't really have an outspoken profile, but if he runs I do suppose that he would profile himself as a Union man, as he started his career with the Socialist mutualities. It's also possible that's he just positioning himself for the job of vice-leader.

[Insula Dei]

De Morgen has a a good political Post Mortem about Gennez today (for the few of you who can read Dutch):

http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/5036/Wetstraat/article/detail/1284681/2011/06/28/De-sp-a-onder-Gennez-het-mocht-iets-minder-zijn.dhtml

[Insula Dei]

Quite an eventfull few days over here. On monday Di Rupo presented a report that was generaly received well and that would form the base of the Coalition Agreement. It foresaw  cuts in social security and healthcare, combined with new taxes on large capitals and company cars.

The report was received well by the Francophone parties, OpenVLD and SP.a. The CD&V decided that pretending to have any autonomy was a lost cause anyway, and just communicated that it would do as the N-VA did. The N-VA decided that it wanted more: deeper cuts and more responsibility/autonomy for the regions.

I thought the report was pretty strong stuff, and it certainly went beyond the stuff I would have been willing to swallow in return for a Socialist PM.  So did all (!) Belgian Unions. And I'm quite sure that if Flemish popular opinion would have had the opportunity to actually care about anything beyond the linguistic war that's been raging since 2007, it wouldn't have liked the general tone of the report either. The shocking truth is that the N-VA doesn't seem to want a solution, that its economical policies would be hugely unpopular and that absolutely nobody seems to care. The Flemish media are horribly inept and don't seem to grasp the difference between actually important issues and the issues people are shouting the loudest about. I'm very pessimistic about the future of this country.

Anyway, as I'm out of the country for the next 2 weeks, without reliable internet acces, you guys will perhaps be better informed about what happens next than I am.