Do you think the Flemish people want to be independent? Are you forgotten the opinion-research of three months ago? Two on three Flemish don’t know the name of their minister-president!

More work in Flanders! .. The jobs are not filled in by now..

More welfare! .. We’re one of the region’s in Europe with the highest prosperity..

More, more, more .. individualism and egocentrism.

I don’t want to live in this kind of Flanders. This Flanders don’t know any solidarity, not with the Walloons, not with the third or fourth world .

(opinion-article: De Standaard, 03/09/2007)

After two-and-a-half months, Yves Leterme, former president of the Flemish regional government and appointed by the Belgian king as ‘formateur’, has withdrawn from negotiations between the victorious political parties of July 11th federal elections. According to mr. Leterme it was “impossible” to come to an agreement between political parties from both parts of the country. The main obstacle was the hard-line position of the Christian-Democrat’s Walloon region ‘CDH’, the counterpart ofLeterme’s own ‘CD&V’ or Flemish Christian Democrat Party, against constitutional reforms regarding more autonomy for the different regions in Belgium.

Let’s all keep in mind that we are talking about a country which measures only 30500 square kilometers and has a total population of not more then about 10.5 million people.

Astonishing as it might be, Leterme now went to -of all people- the Belgian king to hand over his assignment. According to the constitution of our parlementary and ‘democratic’ monarchy, now it is up to this descendant of the Leopolds’ to revitalise the negotiations. As polls (dating from before this latest escalations) show, almost 70% of Belgians feel that they have no interest whatsoever in this crisis.

One might question many aspacts of this procedure. First, why is a king who is supposed to have nothing but a ceremonial role involved in so many crucial discussions involving the future of our state? Second, why do politicians believe that once the ballots are closed, they no longer have to justify their actions towards the general public? Third, why are all the socio-economic issues which the parties vowed to address during the elections suddenly become secondary? And thus fourth, what effect will this display of incompetence have on a public who is well know to express its malcontent with the traditional parties by voting for the extreme rightist and nationalist party ‘Vlaams belang‘?

Long before this crisis, the ‘Vlaams belang‘-party has already announced that if it enters a federal government, it will be the last one ever. The incompetence of our elected leaders to come together and to govern, once again takes us a little bit closer to this ridiculous fantasy…