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-2019-11374131https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/17974068/embed?auto=1I’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.
BrusselsThe 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-electoralhttps://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
Poll
