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Bitter divisions make future look grim

French- and Dutch-speaking parties have entered emergency talks in hopes of forming a government, but nobody is optimistic


DOUG SAUNDERS
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

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September 26, 2007 at 5:51 AM EDT

TERVUREN, Belgium — As you drive out of Brussels, you can't help noticing the novel sight of Belgian flags, hundreds of them, hanging from apartment balconies and office windows along the major boulevards.
Put up during the past two weeks, they are spontaneous public gestures of national unity, in a normally quiet country whose unity has fallen deeply into question, to the point that the future existence of Belgium has become a matter of open debate in recent days.
After national elections on June 10, Belgium has now gone 108 days without a government, and the French-speaking and Dutch-speaking parties who might make up a majority have now entered emergency talks in an effort to find any common ground with which to form one. Nobody is optimistic.
"This is not going to be easy or fast," said Jean-Luc Dehaene, who was Belgian prime minister in the 1990s and has now been appointed as head of a "wise men" group called to settle the impasse. "These sort of negotiations are a part of life here - I don't think I need to explain that to Canadians. But this time, the parties seem to believe that they have no common ground for a compromise, they have no reason to see the interests of the other side."

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This peaceful and generally prosperous country has always been divided into twin solitudes of extraordinary isolation: The French-speaking Walloon minority and Dutch-speaking Flemish majority have long existed in isolated worlds. With no shared national media, few shared institutions and no form of bilingualism, forming governments has never been easy. But now the governing negotiations feel like the early stages of a divorce.
When you reach Valentine Micha's village, you quickly understand why.
While things look placid on the streets of Tervuren, just far enough outside of Brussels to fall in the Flemish jurisdiction of Flanders, life has become almost impossible for the French speakers who number 4,000 in this town of 20,000, according to election records.
Ms. Micha, whose French-speaking family has lived here for two generations, recently tried to put on a puppet show for young children, in French, in the public square. The Flemish-dominated city government (of which she is a council member) first charged her 14 times the normal rate, on the grounds that hers was a "non-Flemish" organization. Then they banned it outright, because it might attract angry protests from Flemish language-rights groups.
Signs have recently appeared here, in four languages, declaring that government services, including policing and courts, are only available in Flemish. Boy Scout groups have had to hold their French-language meetings in the town's English school, which is technically private because it is operated by a British government organization. A French scout meeting in a public school would not be allowed.
"These are my neighbours
and friends, and they have changed," Ms. Micha says. "They either tell me that I cannot possibly be a French speaker, I must be actually Flemish, or that I am an immigrant who ought to learn the language. This is my own country, and I am speaking one of its official languages!"
Her town's transformation is part of a wave of Flemish nationalism that has swept across Belgium's northern region in recent years. Its most dramatic manifestation has been the rising success of Flemish separatist parties. They are far from seizing power, attracting only about 10 per cent of the vote, but a small party with separatist ambitions is part of the proposed governing coalition.
But the separatists' vision of Flanders - as a people rather than a geographic region - has had a dramatic influence on the country's politics. In order to prevent the extreme nationalist Flemish Bloc party from winning, the mainstream Flemish Christian Democrat party promised voters a high degree of autonomy, and adopted some of the anti-minority language of the separatists.
"We feel that the point of view of our party is very quickly becoming something close to a majority view," said Frank Vanhecke, chairman of the Flemish Bloc. "Our views are now given their affirmation by the other Flemish parties. So our party can only win."
The Flemish regions with large francophone populations are becoming increasingly hostile to those minorities, out of a fear that they want to take their towns out of Flanders and make them part of the bilingual municipality of Brussels.
"French-speaking people in Flanders are not the kind of people who need minority rights," Mr. Vanhecke said. "They are people who have come to live in Flanders quite recently, and who refuse to adapt to the language and the culture of where they live. People who come to our country, we ask them to conform to our language."
This kind of rhetoric has poisoned the atmosphere, observers say. "In the past, the ruling parties have always made deals that acknowledge the existence of the minority parties," Belgian historian Marc Reynebeau said. "Now the Flemish parties are threatening to impose majority rule if they don't get their way. If they do that, it will be unprecedented - it will be the constitutional equivalent of a declaration of war."
He noted that many of the votes for Flemish nationalism are actually votes against non-European immigrants, who tend to move to the prosperous north and who almost all choose to speak French.

Tot zover het hilarische verslag van een autorit tussen een kantoor in Brussel en een residentie in Tervuren... Komen die buitenlandse journalisten nooit eens buiten hun microscopische biotoop?

Ik krijg dagelijks kettingmails van Brusselse vrienden (allemaal uitsluitend in het Frans, évidemment) om mijn Belgische vlag buiten te hangen.

Maar, hier in Oost-Vlaanderen heb ik er nog geen enkele vlag gezien.

Weet iemand of er in Wallonië massaal Belgische vlaggen worden uitgehangen aan balcons?

Het B-vlag hangen is een strikt Brussels fenomeen. Het toont aan dat de Brusselse gourmand idd het meest te verliezen heeft bij een uiteenvallen van zijn Belgisch wingewest.

Dit wordt stilaan een strijd van Walen en Vlamingen tegen Brussel.

Wat wil u nu eigenlijk zeggen met deze tussenkomst? Dat u alle Belgisache wegen bent afgereisd en enkel in Brussel vlaggen zag?

Dat er uitsluitend in Brussel Belgische noodvlaggen hangen, en dat het Belgisch nationalisme om evidente redenen zo goed als uitsluitend in Brussel leeft.

bwa, ik denk dat het vooral om andere redenen is
in elke hoofdstad zijn de nationalistische gevoelens groter, zij vertegenwoordigen immers het hele land

Loooooooool !

tja u snapt het ook niet, he
londen is het uithangbord van GB, Parijs is het uithangbord van FR
het is toch logisch dat de hoofdstedelijken zich daarvan bewust zijn, en daar trots op zijn?

Brussel vertegenwoordigt helemaal niemand.

Zonder Vlaanderen en Wallonië stelt het niets voor. Brussel legt alleen maar zijn visie op aan de rest van het land. Dat er nu alleen noodvlaggen hangen in Brussel toont alleen maar dat de rest onverschillig blijft voor hun gehuil en dat er stilaan een eind komt aan de Brussels-francofone suprematie in België.

Tja zo gaan we er niet geraken he. Wat stelt Parijs voor zonder de 50 miljoen andere Fransen? OF London zonder de 53 miljoen andere Britten?

Mijn enige punt was trouwens dat een hoofdstad gewoon meer nationalitisch ingesteld is dan andere streken van het land. Dat lijkt me niet meer dan logisch.

Allé, ge hebt honderd en ge krijgt gelijk, zenne.

Die vlaggen betekenen dus dat de Brusselaars meer nationalistisch ingesteld zijn.

En, waar geraken we daarmee?

In Brussel heb ik inderdaad een aantal vlaggen zien hangen, maar of dat er nu zo veel zijn... Tijdens een E/WK voetbal zie je er meer (maar dan vooral Braziliaanse, Italiaanse en Turkse :))

Een Italiaanse collega vroeg me onlangs waarom, en toen ik het hem vertelde heeft hij maar snel zijn (Italiaanse) vlag terug binnengehaald :)

In Gent en omstreken heb ik er nog geen gezien.

tja u bracht het punt natuurlijk ten berde
ik weet niet waarom u daarop focusde

We weten nu dat België zich meer en meer beperkt tot Brussel.

Tja, niks aan te doen. Ik denk niet dat het zo dramatisch is, maar het lijkt idd niet direcht in stijgende lijn te zitten.

Ook geen sovjetvlag? :-o