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

[Zinneke]

New polls

[Zinneke]

There's a much deeper corruption at work here than simply ''fcuk poor people''. ECOLO are useful idiots and will yet again take the brunt of the criticism for failed energy policy. But MR and PS are up to their necks in corruption hence why they changed their tune so suddenly on nuclear power...

Its all there out in the open : The Secretary General of the MR, Valentine Delwart (https://www.cumuleo.be/nl/mandataris/6778-valentine-delwart.php), works for a gas company on the side, making 6 figures. She led the federal negotiations in the background while Bouchez was pulling off the media stunts! 

Energy infrastructure, along with housing, is the easiest way to get rich as a politician. You can influence both of those better than most other factors and you can sit on their boards raking in the cash while the feckless journalistic class just lets it go on because "its how things are always done".

[Zinneke]

Raoul was elected by a wide margin

Tensions apparent in MR. Jean-Luc Crucke, the Walloon finance minister is on the brink of resigning because he came out and said he would respect the accords with the PS and ECOLO and implement the fair taxation scheme the leftwing parties demanded. Bouchez and his wing though want a full offensive against the Left despite being in government with them as they try to capitalise on the swing rightwards in France and hope the Presidential election there influences Walloon discourse.

Crucke is part of the more social liberal wing alongside Christine Defraigne and Phillippe Goffin. Bouchez leads the omnipresent Michel clan and seems to have recovered from his humiliation after he bungled several ministerial positions. A split isn't off the table.

[Zinneke]

I would say covid(/healthcare) and energy (/environment) are the most relevant issues rn.

ECOLO are certainly taking an almighty pummeling because of their stance on nuclear. Nollet litterally came out and said it didn't matter if CO2 emissions are higher because other countries in Europe would compensate!

Which also brings us to the whole idiocy of the thing, because the Netherlands just announced the building of 2 new nuclear power plants - there is your compensation for you. How is the security argument not irrelevant now that our neighbour will have 2 plants? If I were an ECOLO strategist I'd have just knocked the ball out of the park by saying the EU should have a clear position as a whole. Instead they are totally naively ceding to their NIMBYist rural activist base that think they are going to grow third nipples from living about 100km from a nuclear power plant.

[Zinneke]

The Vlaamse Belang vice-president has come out as gay.

[Zinneke]

This is Belgium we're talking about (or Flanders, if you prefer), not Serbia. No one will mind.

It's the hypocrisy really, given VB are notoriously homophobic?...although look who I'm talking to

[Zinneke]

The absurd decision of the politicians to shut down cultural activities, despite even the public health officials saying those sectors weren't the principal problem, has landed the Vivaldi into hot water. All 3 Walloon parties inside it now have parliamentarians criticising their own government. The feckless leadership of these 3 parties havr decided to blame it on the Flemish parties, only to reject any attempts by Defi and cdH to bring the debate to the respective parliaments in charge of culture.

We could see a collapse of the federal and Walloon governments by the time the holiday period is over.

[Zinneke]

The absurd decision of the politicians to shut down cultural activities, despite even the public health officials saying those sectors weren't the principal problem, has landed the Vivaldi into hot water. All 3 Walloon parties inside it now have parliamentarians criticising their own government. The feckless leadership of these 3 parties havr decided to blame it on the Flemish parties, only to reject any attempts by Defi and cdH to bring the debate to the respective parliaments in charge of culture.

We could see a collapse of the federal and Walloon governments by the time the holiday period is over.

The Francophone minister of culture is also now basically saying she's not going to do anything about places that decide to stay open anyway. Shambles.

She is just following a trend : police basically said they wouldn't intervene in such cases, then mayors, now high level ministers. We are also the hardest hit with the gas crisis because despite 20 years préparation we still didn't deal with energy policy and nuclear phaseout. Civil disobedience is now pretty much widespread and I won't be surprised if we see even the most feckless, benign people such as the Belgians will be on the street by mid January (finally renewing with reputation Caesar once gave us). We saw the Dutch riot for the first time in years.I refuse to vote for anything near a traditional party in my lifetime, Greens included. I may even vote N-VA just to try and block the Brussels Regional Government from forming a coalition.

Anyway Merry Christmas!

[Zinneke]

The absurd decision of the politicians to shut down cultural activities, despite even the public health officials saying those sectors weren't the principal problem, has landed the Vivaldi into hot water. All 3 Walloon parties inside it now have parliamentarians criticising their own government. The feckless leadership of these 3 parties havr decided to blame it on the Flemish parties, only to reject any attempts by Defi and cdH to bring the debate to the respective parliaments in charge of culture.

We could see a collapse of the federal and Walloon governments by the time the holiday period is over.

The Francophone minister of culture is also now basically saying she's not going to do anything about places that decide to stay open anyway. Shambles.

She is just following a trend : police basically said they wouldn't intervene in such cases, then mayors, now high level ministers. We are also the hardest hit with the gas crisis because despite 20 years préparation we still didn't deal with energy policy and nuclear phaseout. Civil disobedience is now pretty much widespread and I won't be surprised if we see even the most feckless, benign people such as the Belgians will be on the street by mid January (finally renewing with reputation Caesar once gave us). We saw the Dutch riot for the first time in years.I refuse to vote for anything near a traditional party in my lifetime, Greens included. I may even vote N-VA just to try and block the Brussels Regional Government from forming a coalition.

Anyway Merry Christmas!

Don’t vote for the fascist-lites responsible for how broken Belgian politics is. At least swallow and vote for PVDA as a party that would not have led to this disastrous Covid response.

Litterally the only thing stopping me from voting PVDA-PTB is their stance on so called Communist dictatorships like China where they deny a litteral ethnonationalist genocide is happening.

[Zinneke]

The Consitutional Council has ordered the re-opening of theatres and other cultural activities except for cinemas and bowling allies (the latter are taking the matter to a higher court instance.

This is actually a staggering decision in my mind because at no point did the legal judges think maybe, just maybe the 6 month curfew was also totally disproportionate, or the closure of cafes that made signficant time investments to make their spaces safe was also disproportionate. It seems to me that it was just to get De Croo off the hook. He and Vandenbroucke have lost of a lot of political capital in the Francophone media, and are being briefed against by Francophone politicians. It seems like a bit of payback for Wilmes's incompetence that was highlighted a lot by the Flemish media, who now keep quiet over De Croo. 

What's taking place in China technically isn't a "genocide" per se but the difference is academic so calling it a genocide is certainly justified.

Perhaps "People's Dispatch" and "Daily Worker" aren't the best sources of information out there...

"Genocide" most often means, in the present, "mass killing of people I want to highlight for political points and/or to make myself feel good/bad".
If the term is taken to mean any large killing of people for any reason it becomes utterly useless.
But that is what overuse of terminology results in anyway...
"Genocide" and "mass killing" are not necessarily synonyms. It is fine for there to be a legal definition that courts can use. But abusing that definition for sake of political football is clownish behavior that somehow seems to be in vogue these days.
And something isn't suddenly OK just because it isn't a genocide.

I don't use the terms ''genocide'' lightly, but there is ample evidence what is going on in Xinjiang is a genocide. There was a recent independent court decision that set out the argument that while no mass killings were going on, the sterilisation policies and systematic eradication of Uyghur culture constituted a genocide. Mass killings are indeed "worse" in terms of optics, but I fail to see how I should support people like the PVDA-PTB who want only live in a binary world where the USA is the Baddie and everyone who opposes it is the Goodie (including genuine fascists like Putin or the Iranian Regime).

Don’t vote for the fascist-lites responsible for how broken Belgian politics is.

To clarify also, I only said I'd consider voting for N-VA in Brussels regional elections for obvious reasons (to block the institution so that we could finally be done the farcical nature of the Belgian institutional system in general) but its also worth noting that N-VA Brussels are different animal altogether than their provincial counterparts - very "Dansaert flemish" hipster vibes.

[Zinneke]

ok mate



Anyway, Jean-Luc Crucke, the Walloon Minister for Finance and Budget is on the brink of resigning after Georges-Louis Bouchez came out and said he preferred Zemmour to Pécresse but would still vote Macron despite being disappointed. the internal battle between the 2 is well publicised and Crucke could take a sizeable chunk of MR moderates with him. Denis Ducarme, a nominally hard right figure who always had an axe to grind with the Michel clan (that sponsors GLB's meteoric rise in exchange for favours such having the younger Michel brother, a numpty with zero degree, get a ministerial position!), also came out attacking GLB saying he was out of control.

[Zinneke]

He's resigned but been given a cushy position on the Constitutional Court of Belgium...the revolving door of Belgian politics in a nutshell.

[Zinneke]

Another staggering episode in the saga today. Thanks to the MR's party structures giving the President of the party (as opposed to other ministers) control over ministerial selections, Bouchez selected a Councillor from a small village Ham-Sur-Heure in his region, Adrien Dolimont, who many already say inherited the position thanks to his grandfathers connections in the village. Not only that, him leaving the position to become a Walloon minister would mean that his replacement would be non other than Bouchez's girlfiriend, prompting a rare twitter storm in francophone belgian politics before the press conference began, with accusations of nepotism. Bouchez was forced to rule out his girlfriend (whose sister he placed at the head of the national lottery despite being 27 with 1 job on her CV) from acceded to the vacant position in Ham-Sur-Heure, calling the questions over the selection "undignified" and accusing the Belgian press of sexism for making "relationships that are of a personal nature an obstacle to democracy"...

A good time to plug this excellent twitter account that cites the dynastical nature of Belgian politics :

https://twitter.com/Dynastiespol

[Zinneke]

The Vivaldi --> Nazbol transition in 2024 is well on course. We are the champions of inflation in Europe thanks to sh**tty energy bills.

I personally will never vote Ecolo-Groen again until they apologise after they vetoed the idea of reducing VAT on energy based on the argument that people must reduce consumption. It's not so much the idea as the tone deafness of Energy minister Van Der Straeten...as if we all turn our thermostat up to 40 degrees when the bills are cheaper.

These people deserve Vlaams Belang and PTB.

[Zinneke]

Is there election result data on a level lower than municipalities (ideally precincts) for the last Belgian local/federal elections?

I'll have to further investigate but that's a thing I've found to be lacking in Belgium compared to the Netherlands. I believe it's because of the controversial nature of population censuses compared to there.

I've seen district level data on the francophone/Flemish census in the Periphery back when that was if importance but it's out of date.

When do our Belgian posters expect the Covid passport to be abolished? Apparently there will be changes on March 1st that will cause people who weren't vaccinated in the last 5 months (i.e. mostly young people who didn't receive a "booster") to lose their access to restaurants etc. Will this actually happen or will it be abolished beforehand?

Another ridiculous law. But yes, I  and many others will have to get our third jab despite the wave being over. The CST is projected to end in June I believe, and so far only MR's president is even talking about scrapping it early despite now clear evidence it does nothing to stop the spread. ECOLO are also for measure relaxations but mostly none concerning the CST.


The main force behind stricter measures is the Health Minister Vandenbroucke (Vooruit/spa veteran - also known for burning 200k in his back garden back in the day) and De Croo to a lesser extent. Thanks to them we also have this crazy traffic light system that would have only made sense a year ago but is now coming into effect just as people are worn out with measure changes and restrictions in general.

The changing of the goalposts re : the CST in general has been an indicator of how dishonestly governments in Europe treat their citizens and have had tunnel vision throughout the crisis.

 

[Zinneke]

I don't think Tinne is a Gazprom asset. I think she is just incredibly naive and epitomizes the kind of ecologist I have now grown to hate, one that doesn't understand that her own ecology is a form of privilege and fulfills in that sense all the tropes the right-wing would like to have about Green parties.

She should probably resign now, but let's also remember that N-VA and MR had their chance to overturn the nuclear exit when they entered federal government and did not. Because, surprise surprise, the real ones who stand to gain from gas becoming our only source of consistent energy are people like Valentine Delwaert, who sits of the board of gas infrastructure company Fluxys and negotiated the federal government accords on behalf of MR. Or the many MR, PS, cdH and co politicians who sit on the boards of intercommunales, that rake in 40% of the energy costs to "administer" the energy, which largely consists of organising meetings to talk extensively about a comittee to study the extent of this administration, all on the taxpayers expense.

Tinne, Nollet, Gilkinet, Maron...they are all just extremely useful idiots that will carry the can for our energy bills becoming unaffordable. The real corruption lies beyond these people. Its embedded in the very fabric of the Belgian state apparatus.

[Zinneke]

cdh have changed their name to Les Engagés.

[Zinneke]

cdh have changed their name to Les Engagés.

Pathetic really.

I was struggling to find a translation, but wiki has helped me with "The Comitted". Dual meaning of course. One is that you have to be mightily committed politically to still be a part of this anachronistic, sinking ship of a party. And two, you are also likely to have to be committed to some form of mental health institution to think Maxime Prévot is the Belgian Macron.

[Zinneke]

We are incidentally, likely to see MR change their name soon.

[Zinneke]

Rousseau appeals to Zoomers because he goes on celebrity tv, uses tiktok, and even my gf who knows nothing about Belgian politics would be dtf. He also appeals because he doesn't have much of a filter. I think his only major mistake other than the name change is appointing such a divisive figure in Vandenbroucke as health secretary. Rousseau is both a straight talking real reformist and able to strike deals with other parties. But he's still an apparatchik don't get me wrong.

But most of all this bump is down to groen and Tinne the Energy Minister bungling the Energy crisis. Vooruit have been campaigning hard to scrap VAT on energy

[Zinneke]

What is the reason VB seem to be losing a bit of support to the N-VA again? Russia? People forgetting how the N-VA governed federally? Immigration/multicultural issues and Flemish nationalist issues not being high on the agenda right now? Or is it just a regular polling fluke?

I think regular polling fluke, with maybe a bit of Russia coming in. I doubt VB voters understand the subtleties, and I don't mean that they are dumber (well most are) : many of VBs non hardcore casual voters vote against our political class and don't care about VBs links with Russia's far right internationale

[Zinneke]

Wilmes has withdrawn from her role as Foreign Secretary because her husband is terminally ill.

Her party have caused a bit of a storm by violating the (famously ultra-strict) cordon sanitaire by debating Vlaams Belang on Flemish TV. Historically in Francophone Belgium there is a pact between democratic parties to not only reject any coalition with the far right but to boycott any media attempt to include them in the debate. Georges-Louis Bouchez, whose entire ethos is "how can I provoke attention to a° boost my image and b) distract from the fact that my party are a bunch of nepotistic reactionaries posing as Macronista liberals", decided to debate Tom Van Grieken, leader of VB on Flemish tv about the French election* which prompted all the other Francophone parties to co-sign a letter demanding clarification.

Another big issue grabbing headlines in Flanders is the Sanda Dia case re-emerging. Dia was a student at KU Leuven who joined a notoriously elitist fraternity with a particularly brutal hazing. The group tortured Dia and 2 others for 30 hours and made them drink fish oil blended with a mouse carcas. The case itself attract a lot of attention because the Reuzegom fraternity makes Bullingdon look positively plebian given the case itself had to be rejected from Antwerp courts and transferred to Limburg because an accused was the son of a magistrate and not a single other prosecutor was not in some way connected. I'll let anyone interested go down the rabbit hole but safe to say N-VA employing one of the accused as a European Parliament assistant is not good optics for a party already struggling with its elitist image.

* this country is incidentally, obsessed with the French election to an obscene manner, especially in Francophone Belgium : name recognition of French politicians in considerably higher amongst Francophone Belgians than their own elected officials. Mostly because the personalist reality TV sh**tshow of French politics sells better than the kool aid the Belgian politicians sell.

[Zinneke]

Rousseau, leader of Vooruit, using the old trope that he "doesn't feel like I'm in Belgium when I go through Molenbeek"...a typically ignorant comment given Molenbeek has changed drastically since the terror attacks and one.brussels (Vooruit's branch in Brussels) gets many votes with the Flemish hipster crowd moving there.

Anyway it's clearly winking at a possible N-VA/vooruit coalition soon.

[Zinneke]

The darling of the Francophone nation Wilmes has resigned her position as Foreign Secretary to be with her dying husband. Bouchez has replaced her with Hadja Lahbib, a former RTBF foreign correspondent. This is the same RTBF of course that Bouchez said was dominated by a left-wing agenda...hmmm...

There was also a last minute negotiation on the ponzi pension scheme that caused some proper tensions, sometimes within the same political family. Bouchez as usual wants to play opposition within and criticised the deal his own ministers negotiated, prompting De Croo (increasingly under fire by the media and voters alike) to make an underlying dig at his counterpart for posing at festivals. Both VLD and MR though got their campaign pledge to have minimum 20 years work in order to obtain the minimum pension. Given the demographic and debt time bomb though this is all just semantics.

[Zinneke]

The darling of the Francophone nation Wilmes has resigned her position as Foreign Secretary to be with her dying husband. Bouchez has replaced her with Hadja Lahbib, a former RTBF foreign correspondent. This is the same RTBF of course that Bouchez said was dominated by a left-wing agenda...hmmm...

There was also a last minute negotiation on the ponzi pension scheme that caused some proper tensions, sometimes within the same political family. Bouchez as usual wants to play opposition within and criticised the deal his own ministers negotiated, prompting De Croo (increasingly under fire by the media and voters alike) to make an underlying dig at his counterpart for posing at festivals. Both VLD and MR though got their campaign pledge to have minimum 20 years work in order to obtain the minimum pension. Given the demographic and debt time bomb though this is all just semantics.

It turns out our new Foreign Minister visited Crimea after 2014 and posted a puff piece about the Russian occupation. The Ukraine press has picked up on it.

Why of all the talent in this country do we get such blockheads in positions of power...