Now we're at it: Belgian Quiz

[Insula Dei]

So, I figured why not?

Easy

1.Who’s the current Belgian Prime Minister? What is his party affiliation?
2.What parties make up his government?
3.Who preceded him to the post? What was his party affiliation? Why did he abandon the job? Hint: Trust me, you know this.
4.What is remarkable about the ‘current’  government?
5.What is the largest party in parliament? Who is its leader? What is this party a successor  to?
6.What are the 3 main linguistic groups in Belgium?

Moderate

6. Who was Belgian Prime Minister from 1999 to 2007? What was special about the make-up of his governments? What were they nicknamed?
7. What is Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde? What other entity fulfilled a similar role in Belgian political discourse in the 1970s and 1980s?
8. Name all Belgium’s communities.
9. Name all Belgium’s Regions.
10.Can you name the 4 Minister-Presidents? (Two of those are moderate difficulty, 2 are pretty hard.)
11. What was the one event that caused the riots that would kick-start the Belgian revolution?

Hard

12. What was the nickname of the PS politician Guy Spitaels, referring to his extreme degree of influence in party business?
13. Who were the CCC? Who were the Nivelles Gang?
14. Match the quote with the politician:

‘Who still believes these people?’                                                        
‘Trop is te veel en te veel is trop’ (‘Too much is too much and too much is too much’)
‘Sire, give me a hundred days.’
‘Sire, there are no belgians’

Paul Vanden Boeynants
Jules Destrée
Yves Leterme
Jean-Luc Dehaene

15. What happened at both the coronation of Albert II and Boudewijn/Baudouin?


Answers will follow if there's any interest

[MaxQue]

1. Yves Le Terne Leterme (but he is really "terne"!), CD&V.

2. CD&V, MR, PS, cdH, Open VLD (or whatever they are called now).

3. Herman van Rompuy, CD&V, "European President", which is a totally useless office.

4. It resigned over a year ago, but is still there because no government was formed since then.

5. N-VA, Bart de Wever, succersor to SPIRIT.

6. Flemish, French, German.


6. Guy Verhofstadt, or something like that. They included some socialist, liberal and christian-democrat parties. Purple coalition?

7. A clusterf***. Sorry for the rude words, but I'm right. It is the electoral "arrondissement" including Bruxelles and the French-bilingual areas around it, but situated in Flanders. The problem is than French people wants those areas the join Bruxelles, but the Flemish people doesn't want, because Bruxelles and Wallonie would be geographically linked, meaning than they would lose their capital if they left Belgium. Brabant/Braabant was the problem in the 80's. It was solved by splitting it in two (Flemish Braabant and Brabant Aallon).

8. Flemish, French and German

9. Bruxelles, Flanders and Wallonie.

10. One is called Michel?

11. Introduction of a ban on Catholics being involved in the government?


12. The puppetmaster?

13. CCC: I don't know, but I feel they were bad. Extreme Catholics killing foreigners?
     Nivelles Gang: A criminal gang based in the city of Nivelles which killed people?

14.
‘Who still believes these people?’ Jean-Luc Dehaene                                                   
‘Trop is te veel en te veel is trop’ Paul Vanden Boeynants
‘Sire, give me a hundred days.’ Yves Leterme
‘Sire, there are no belgians’ Jules Destrée

15. Republican protestors pertubing the ceremony?

[Hash]

I will do very badly...

Easy

1. Yves Leterme, CDV
2. CDV, MR, cdh, PS?. VLD left I know.
3. Herman van Rompuy, CDV, became EU Prez
4. lame-duck interim government for over a year, lacks confidence of Parliament
5. N-VA led by Bart de Wever. Successor to Volksunie
6. French, Flemish/Dutch, German

Moderate

6. Guy Verhofstadt. VLD. Liberal-green-socialist govt iirc, no Catholics for the first time in a longtime
7. BHV is an electoral constituency which includes bilingual Bruxelles and unilingual parts of Flanders but people can vote for French parties there too. I'd guess that place in Flanders which voted 50%+ NVA but which is Francophone, Fleurons or something, was big in the 70s.
8. Flemish Community, French Community, German Community
9. Wallonia, Flanders, German place
10. Kris Peeters in Flanders, Karl-Heinz Lambert for the Germans and forgot the Frenchies
11. no idea

Hard

12. no idea
13. I think CCC might have been a liberal French party integrated in the MR, probably wrong
14. Match the quote with the politician:

‘Who still believes these people?’                                                        
‘Trop is te veel en te veel is trop’ (‘Too much is too much and too much is too much’)
‘Sire, give me a hundred days.’ gotta be Yves Leterme
‘Sire, there are no belgians’


15. no clue

[minionofmidas]

1.Who’s the current Belgian Prime Minister? What is his party affiliation?
Herman Van Rompuy, Flemish Christian Democrats I think.

2.What parties make up his government?
No idea. I stopped caring some time ago.

3.Who preceded him to the post? What was his party affiliation? Why did he abandon the job? Hint: Trust me, you know this.
Same party, but a Fleminazi in all but name. I forget his name though; it was oddly French-sounding. Abandoned the job because he didn't get his will and his coalition partners didn't want to work with him.

4.What is remarkable about the ‘current’  government?
Is it still an interim government officially?

5.What is the largest party in parliament? Who is its leader? What is this party a successor  to?
Oh come on, Belgian parties take new official names faster than I change underwear.

6.What are the 3 main linguistic groups in Belgium?
Dutch (Flemish), French (Walloon), German

Moderate

6. Who was Belgian Prime Minister from 1999 to 2007? What was special about the make-up of his governments? What were they nicknamed?
Ooh, damn, I really should remember his name, but can't right now. They were Liberal-Socialist-Green coalitions (he was a Liberal), but I don't know what you called them. Rainbow?

7. What is Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde? What other entity fulfilled a similar role in Belgian political discourse in the 1970s and 1980s?
A constituency for the Belgian parliament, consisting of Brussels Province and the parts of Flemish Brabant province that really, really need to be in Brussels Province (the only officially bilingual province). Flemish parties want the constituency to be divided (and thus for the French parties to not get any more votes from Halle-Vilvoorde.) Walloons won't hear of it.
Not sure of the other entity... or wait, I remember some battles over the university of Louvain (a French uni in a Flemish speaking town), but I have no clue if that's what you mean.

8. Name all Belgium’s communities.
Flemish, Walloon, German

9. Name all Belgium’s Regions.
Flanders, Wallonia (including the German part), Brussels

10.Can you name the 4 Minister-Presidents? (Two of those are moderate difficulty, 2 are pretty hard.)
Uh... what? Why four?

11. What was the one event that caused the riots that would kick-start the Belgian revolution?
You mean in 1830? No idea.

Hard

12. What was the nickname of the PS politician Guy Spitaels, referring to his extreme degree of influence in party business?
The Don?

13. Who were the CCC? Who were the Nivelles Gang?
No clue.

14. Match the quote with the politician:

‘Who still believes these people?’                                                        
‘Trop is te veel en te veel is trop’ (‘Too much is too much and too much is too much’)
‘Sire, give me a hundred days.’
‘Sire, there are no belgians’

Paul Vanden Boeynants
Jules Destrée
Yves Leterme
Jean-Luc Dehaene
Last must be a Flemish Nationalist. Oh, and Yves Leterme is Van Rompuy's predecessor that I couldn't think of.

15. What happened at both the coronation of Albert II and Boudewijn/Baudouin?
People booed and hissed?

[Insula Dei]

Answers:

1. Yves Leterme, CD&V
@Lewis; While Leterme certainly campaigned on a hard-line platform in 2007, he's actually been quite moderate in government, partly because looking like a statesman is his last resort, partly because the N-VA is no longer in cartel with his party. Mind you, this is still the man who once compared the national francophone TV channel to Radio Mille Collines, or who once remarked that 'it appears to be the case that francophones are intellectually incapable of learning dutch'.

2. CD&V, cdH, MR, OpenVLD, PS
Basicaly a Orange-Blue+ coalition. The PS was brought abroad when it still seemed as if a deal on B-H-V might be struck as long as the francophones could feel secure they wouldn't be alone in facing the voters wrath.

3. Herman Van Rompuy, CD&V, left to become EU 'president'.

4. The government resigned over a year ago, and has been a 'government of current affairs' with constitutionally very limited powers.

5. N-VA, Bart de Wever, succesor party to the old Volksunie, mainly consisiting from that party's conservative, 'extremist' wing

6. Flemish, Walloon, German (in the East Cantons)

7. Guy Verhofstadt, VLD, led a coalition of VLD, MR, PS, sp.a from 1999-2007 (Agalev and Ecolo before 2003). His governments were notable for excluding the Christian-Democrats who had been continuously in power 1949-1999. The 'purple' ('paars') government formula was sort-of-copied from Wim Kok's government in The Hague (1994-2002)

8. Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde is a constituency for elections to the Belgian Chamber of Deputies. It is controversial because it includes both Brussels and the Eastern half of  Flemish Brabant, which means that the francophone voters in the formally Flemish areas around Brussels get to vote for francophone parties, while Flemish voters in Walloon Brabant don't get to vote for their parties. There are multiple possible solutions to the problem, the most likely of which would be to split the district, but attach certain municipalities to Brussels for all purposes, rather than just electoral ones.

8. Flemish Community, Walloon Community, German Community (mainly Eupen and Malmedy and environment)

9. Flemish region, Walloon region, Brussels-Capital region

10. Kris Peeters (CD&V Flanders) Rudy Aernoudt (PS Wallonia) Karl-Heinz Lambrecht (PS, German community) Charles Picqué (PS Brussels)

11. In 1830 there were heavy riots in Brussels after a performance of Auber's La Muette de Portici, which had certain thematic links to many of the grudges held by francophones and catholics against the Dutch government.

12. 'Dieu'

13. The CCC (Cellules Communistes Combattantes) were a terror group who bombed several high-profile targets in the early eighties. They did make a habit of warning beforehand, but nonetheless inadvertedly killed 2 firemen in the process. Maybe their most succesful attack in terms of symbolism was on the study centre of the liberal PVV. They were eventually arrested in a branch of French MacDonald's look-alike Quick.
The Nivelles Gang were responsable for several bloody hold-ups in supermarkets in Brabant, killing 28 and wounding several dozens of others. They were never arrested and the identity of 'the Giant' or 'the Killer' remains a mystery. There also was a parliamentary Commitee which looked into the failure of the investigation. The Nivelles Gang is often linked to for example Gladio, or the 'Pink Ballets', by conspiracy theorists.

14.
‘Who still believes these people?’  Yves Leterme's famed one-liner that sealed the fate of Verhofstadt in the 2007 campaign. A line that would come back to haunt Leterme troughout the formation debacle

‘Trop is te veel en te veel is trop’   Paul Vanden Boeynants after being released in 1985. The ex-Prime Minister was held captive by a gang for several weeks untill a ransom was paid. The leader of the gang would later hang himself in prison. Cue more conspiracy theories.

‘Sire, give me a hundred days.' Jean-Luc Dehaene reassuring the king on the occasion of yet another very difficult formation in the early 1990s. Dehaene would become a Prime Minister after it had become clear that his predecessor Martens was unable to form a government. Initially unpopular even within his own party, Dehaene would remain Prime Minister troughout the 1990s and would even have to be begged by those that had once loathed him to stand for re-election in 1999.

‘Sire, there are no belgians’  Jules Destrée's famous illustration that being anti-Belgian hasn't always been exclusively Flemish. In 1950 it was Flanders that loyally backed the monarchy against the anti-Leopoldist Walloons.

15. At both coronations a parliamentarian shouted 'Vive la République' while the king was taking the oath. Boudewijn's tormentor was long believed to be Communist monument Julien Lahaut, but recent testimonies suggest that it might have been another Communist MP. Lahaut's assassination later in 1950 would often be linked to this episode, though again, recent evidence suggests otherwise. At Albert's coronation it was self-declared 'libertine'/total joke/convicted fraud Jean-Pierre van Rossem who made this into a tradition. As a result van Rossem's party (aptly named 'ROSSEM') split, as its other MP rather liked the monarchy.(The other MP was famed theater maker Jan de Corte, who was a remarkably responsable MP, considering he was elected as a joke candidate. He also helped the government get a 2/3 majority to reform the state infrastructure.)
Let's hope that when Filip takes the oath our parliament will keep a good tradition alive.