Belgium marks year of gridlock
Source: Agencies |
June 13, 2011, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
ONE year after elections were supposed to offer a way out of endless linguistic bickering, Belgium is still looking for a government and the infighting between Dutch-speaking and Francophone parties is worsening.
Today marks a full year since elections brought the anti-Belgium N-VA regionalists to the fore in Dutch-speaking Flanders and left the pro-Belgium PS Socialists as the main party in Francophone regions.
The two need to work together to form a unitary national government, but have been spectacularly unsuccessful during a year of bitter sniping, interspersed with periods of cold silence.
In the meantime, a caretaker government is trying to take care of business, but is hamstrung by an inability to take decisive action while international investors take an increasingly dim view of things.
N-VA leader Bart De Wever compared it to a marathon. "I don't know at what kilometer we are right now. I only know that this summer we need to have a breakthrough," he said.
So far, the 6 million Fleming and 5 million Francophones have remained largely indifferent, apart from a few protest marches and fun actions as the country first broke the European record of coalition talks in January and followed it up by beating Iraq's record this spring.
Everything remained eerily quiet in the leadup to today's one-year election mark too. Two popularity polls indicated that the N-VA and PS would both continue to surge in their regions at around a third of the electorate, none of the two punished by their inability to produce a government.
PS leader Elio Di Rupo is currently tasked by the king to form a government and had talks with De Wever over the weekend. All sides say though, no breakthrough is imminent.
"It is for him to show initiative and, so far, we hear little," said De Wever.
The Flemings from the north and the Francophones have found it over the past decades increasingly difficult to broker compromises between the two sides, as running the country has become ever more complicated.
Today marks a full year since elections brought the anti-Belgium N-VA regionalists to the fore in Dutch-speaking Flanders and left the pro-Belgium PS Socialists as the main party in Francophone regions.
The two need to work together to form a unitary national government, but have been spectacularly unsuccessful during a year of bitter sniping, interspersed with periods of cold silence.
In the meantime, a caretaker government is trying to take care of business, but is hamstrung by an inability to take decisive action while international investors take an increasingly dim view of things.
N-VA leader Bart De Wever compared it to a marathon. "I don't know at what kilometer we are right now. I only know that this summer we need to have a breakthrough," he said.
So far, the 6 million Fleming and 5 million Francophones have remained largely indifferent, apart from a few protest marches and fun actions as the country first broke the European record of coalition talks in January and followed it up by beating Iraq's record this spring.
Everything remained eerily quiet in the leadup to today's one-year election mark too. Two popularity polls indicated that the N-VA and PS would both continue to surge in their regions at around a third of the electorate, none of the two punished by their inability to produce a government.
PS leader Elio Di Rupo is currently tasked by the king to form a government and had talks with De Wever over the weekend. All sides say though, no breakthrough is imminent.
"It is for him to show initiative and, so far, we hear little," said De Wever.
The Flemings from the north and the Francophones have found it over the past decades increasingly difficult to broker compromises between the two sides, as running the country has become ever more complicated.
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