NY Times over de Belgische crisis

gm10 · 23 september 2007, 22:32

Calls for a Breakup Grow Ever Louder in Belgium

Fred Guerdin/Reporters
Filip Dewinter, the leader of the extreme-right Flemish party Vlaams Belang, held a cake Tuesday celebrating Belgium’s 100th day without a government after the last general election. Published: September 21, 2007

BRUSSELS, Sept. 16 — Belgium has given the world Audrey Hepburn, René Magritte, the saxophone and deep-fried potato slices that somehow are called French.
Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image

Fred Guerdin/Reporters
In the southern region of Wallonia, members of a political group expressed their desire for the region to join France.

But the back story of this flat, Maryland-size country of 10.4 million is of a bad marriage writ large — two nationalities living together that cannot stand each other. Now, more than three months after a general election, Belgium has failed to create a government, producing a crisis so profound that it has led to a flood of warnings, predictions, even promises that the country is about to disappear.
“We are two different nations, an artificial state created as a buffer between big powers, and we have nothing in common except a king, chocolate and beer,” said Filip Dewinter, the leader of Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Bloc, the extreme-right, xenophobic Flemish party, in an interview. “It’s ‘bye-bye, Belgium’ time.”
Radical Flemish separatists like Mr. Dewinter want to slice the country horizontally along ethnic and economic lines: to the north, their beloved Flanders — where Dutch (known locally as Flemish) is spoken and money is increasingly made — and to the south, French-speaking Wallonia, where a kind of provincial snobbery was once polished to a fine sheen and where today old factories dominate the gray landscape.
“There are two extremes, some screaming that Belgium will last forever and others saying that we are standing at the edge of a ravine,” said Caroline Sägesser, a Belgian political analyst at Crisp, a socio-political research organization in Brussels. “I don’t believe Belgium is about to split up right now. But in my lifetime? I’d be surprised if I were to die in Belgium.”
With the headquarters of both NATO and the European Union in Brussels, the crisis is not limited to this country because it could embolden other European separatist movements, among them the Basques, the Lombards and the Catalans.
Since the kingdom of Belgium was created as an obstacle to French expansionism in 1830, it has struggled for cohesion. Anyone who has spoken French in a Flemish city quickly gets a sense of the mutual hostility that is a part of daily life here. The current crisis dates from June 10, when the Flemish Christian Democrats, who demand greater autonomy for Flanders, came in first with one-fifth of the seats in Parliament.
Yves Leterme, the party leader, would have become prime minister if he had been able to put together a coalition government.
But he was rejected by French speakers because of his contempt for them — an oddity since his own father is a French speaker. He further alienated them, and even some moderate Flemish leaders, on Belgium’s national holiday, July 21, when he appeared unable — or unwilling — to sing Belgium’s national anthem.
Belgium’s mild-mannered, 73-year-old king, Albert II, has struggled to mediate, even though under the Constitution he has no power other than to appoint ministers and rubber-stamp laws passed by Parliament. He has welcomed a parade of politicians and elder statesmen to the Belvedere palace in Brussels, successively appointing four political leaders to resolve the crisis. All have failed.
On one level, there is normalcy and calm here. The country is governed largely by a patchwork of regional bureaucracies, so trains run on time, mail is delivered, garbage is collected, the police keep order.
Officials from the former government — including former Prime Minister Guy Verhhofstadt, who is ethnically Flemish — report for work every day and continue to collect salaries. The former government is allowed to pay bills, carry out previously decided policies and make urgent decisions on peace and security.
Earlier this month, for example, the governing Council of Ministers approved the deployment of 80 to 100 peacekeeping troops to Chad and a six-month extension for 400 Belgian peacekeepers stationed in Lebanon under United Nations mandates.
But a new government will be needed to approve a budget for next year.
Certainly, there are reasons Belgium is likely to stay together, at least in the short term.
Brussels, the country’s overwhelmingly French-speaking capital, is in Flanders and historically was a Flemish-speaking city. There would be overwhelming local and international resistance to turning Brussels into the capital of a country called Flanders.
The economies of the two regions are inextricably intertwined, and separation would be a fiscal nightmare.
Then there is the issue of the national debt (90 percent of Belgium’s gross domestic product) and how to divide it equitably.
But there is also deep resentment in Flanders that its much healthier economy must subsidize the French-speaking south, where unemployment is double that of the north.

[A poll by the private Field Research Institute released on Tuesday indicated that 66 percent of the inhabitants of Flanders believe that the country will split up “sooner or later,” and 46 percent favor such a division. The poll, which was conducted by telephone, interviewed 1,000 people.]
French speakers, meanwhile, favor the status quo. “Ladies and gentlemen, everything’s fine!” exclaimed Mayor Jacques Étienne of Namur, the Walloon capital, at the annual Walloon festival last Saturday.
Acknowledging that talk of a “divorce” had returned, he reminded the audience that this was a day to celebrate, saying, “We have to, if possible, forget about our personal worries and the anxieties of our time.”
Belgium has suffered through previous political crises and threats of partition. But a number of political analysts believe this one is different.
The turning point is widely believed to have been last December when RTBF, a French-language public television channel, broadcast a hoax on the breakup of Belgium.
The two-hour live television report showed images of cheering, flag-waving Flemish nationalists and crowds of French-speaking Walloons preparing to leave, while also reporting that the king had fled the country.
Panicked viewers called the station, and the prime minister’s office condemned the program as irresponsible and tasteless. But for the first time, in the public imagination, the possibility of a breakup seemed real.
Contributing to the difficulty in forming a new government now is the fact that all 11 parties in the national Parliament are local, not national, parties. The country has eight regional or language-based parliaments.
Oddly, there is no panic just now, just exasperation and a hint of embarrassment. “We must not worry too much,” said Baudouin Bruggeman, a 55-year-old schoolteacher, as he sipped Champagne at the festival in Namur. “Belgium has survived on compromise since 1830. Everyone puffs himself up in this banana republic. You have to remember that this is Magritte country, the country of surrealism. Anything can happen.”
var tcdacmd="dt";

evilbu · 23 september 2007, 22:35

Citaat:

Contributing to the difficulty in forming a new government now is the fact that all 11 parties in the national Parliament are local, not national, parties. The country has eight regional or language-based parliaments.

bij mijn weten heeft België maar zeven parlementen, en dan tel ik het nationaal parlement nog mee, en het parlement van het Vlaams Gewest en de Vlaamse Gemeenschap tel ik daarvoor nog als twee.

Hertog van Gelre · 23 september 2007, 22:37

Leuk zoals de RTBF wordt beschreven. Als Belgie splitst is de RTBF degene geweest die de geesten ervoor rijp heeft gemaakt...
Zullen er koppen gaan rollen bij die omroep?

HAMC · 23 september 2007, 22:44

In het algemeen is het wel goed vind ik.

baseballpolitieker · 23 september 2007, 22:50

ALLE grote kranten hebben het al over ons gehad, hoe gaat dat binnen 50 dagen zijn...

Jaani_Dushman · 23 september 2007, 22:52

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door baseballpolitieker

ALLE grote kranten hebben het al over ons gehad, hoe gaat dat binnen 50 dagen zijn...

Dan gaan alle kranten over uw alcoholintoxicatie schrijven.

Jazeker · 24 september 2007, 11:30

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door gm10

Zalige foto

Ik-haat-afwassen · 24 september 2007, 11:37

Nu die taart nog in de drager zijn gezicht, en het zou een veel betere foto zijn.

Duupje · 24 september 2007, 11:44

Ik wil ook zo'n taartje.

Derk de Tweede · 24 september 2007, 12:06

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Duupje

Ik wil ook zo'n taartje.

Wordt je daar niet te dik van......?

Duupje · 24 september 2007, 12:20

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Derk de Tweede

Wordt je daar niet te dik van......?

Ik heb nergens gezegd dat ik ze zou opeten. Daarbij, ik mag dat niet eten.

Derk de Tweede · 24 september 2007, 12:24

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Duupje

Ik heb nergens gezegd dat ik ze zou opeten. Daarbij, ik mag dat niet eten.

Je mag alles!
Maar je wilt het dus gewoon niet!

Duupje · 24 september 2007, 12:57

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Derk de Tweede

Je mag alles!
Maar je wilt het dus gewoon niet!

Nee, ik mag dat dus niet, tenzij ik mijn gezondheid in gevaar wil brengen, en dat is een taartje me heus niet waard.

Daarbij seg ! Zalige taart gewoon, neh !

manta · 24 september 2007, 13:09

Mss de moment om de publieke opinie daar te beïnvloeden ...
Een paar berichten over walen die Mc.Donalds in de fik steken en zo ....

Een fotootje van een waal die een Amerikaanse vlag verbrandt gaat er daar ook altijd goed in ...

Bovenbuur · 24 september 2007, 13:55

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Derk de Tweede

Wordt je daar niet te dik van......?

Van diëten ga je dood! Eten die taart!

Derk de Tweede · 24 september 2007, 14:12

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Bovenbuur

Van diëten ga je dood! Eten die taart!

Die Sonja Bakker is rijk geworden van die domme mutsen!

StevenNr1 · 24 september 2007, 14:23

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Jazeker

Zalige foto

al uw helden verenigd?

Zwartengeel · 24 september 2007, 14:26

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door StevenNr1

al uw helden verenigd?

Zie jij Regina Spector daar dan ergens staan?

Derk de Tweede · 24 september 2007, 15:34

Welke crisis?
Biertekort, friettekort of Dronkoers heeft een nieuwe wagen...

Mitgard · 24 september 2007, 15:40

Citaat:

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Jazeker

Zalige foto

idd.
plat leedvermaak in zijn rauwste vorm.

op zieke knolselder feestende schimmels.

23 september 2007, 22:32	#1
gm10 Eur. Commissievoorzitter Geregistreerd: 13 januari 2004 Locatie: London Berichten: 8.988	NY Times over de Belgische crisis Calls for a Breakup Grow Ever Louder in Belgium Fred Guerdin/Reporters Filip Dewinter, the leader of the extreme-right Flemish party Vlaams Belang, held a cake Tuesday celebrating Belgium’s 100th day without a government after the last general election. Published: September 21, 2007 BRUSSELS, Sept. 16 — Belgium has given the world Audrey Hepburn, René Magritte, the saxophone and deep-fried potato slices that somehow are called French. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Fred Guerdin/Reporters In the southern region of Wallonia, members of a political group expressed their desire for the region to join France. But the back story of this flat, Maryland-size country of 10.4 million is of a bad marriage writ large — two nationalities living together that cannot stand each other. Now, more than three months after a general election, Belgium has failed to create a government, producing a crisis so profound that it has led to a flood of warnings, predictions, even promises that the country is about to disappear. “We are two different nations, an artificial state created as a buffer between big powers, and we have nothing in common except a king, chocolate and beer,” said Filip Dewinter, the leader of Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Bloc, the extreme-right, xenophobic Flemish party, in an interview. “It’s ‘bye-bye, Belgium’ time.” Radical Flemish separatists like Mr. Dewinter want to slice the country horizontally along ethnic and economic lines: to the north, their beloved Flanders — where Dutch (known locally as Flemish) is spoken and money is increasingly made — and to the south, French-speaking Wallonia, where a kind of provincial snobbery was once polished to a fine sheen and where today old factories dominate the gray landscape. “There are two extremes, some screaming that Belgium will last forever and others saying that we are standing at the edge of a ravine,” said Caroline Sägesser, a Belgian political analyst at Crisp, a socio-political research organization in Brussels. “I don’t believe Belgium is about to split up right now. But in my lifetime? I’d be surprised if I were to die in Belgium.” With the headquarters of both NATO and the European Union in Brussels, the crisis is not limited to this country because it could embolden other European separatist movements, among them the Basques, the Lombards and the Catalans. Since the kingdom of Belgium was created as an obstacle to French expansionism in 1830, it has struggled for cohesion. Anyone who has spoken French in a Flemish city quickly gets a sense of the mutual hostility that is a part of daily life here. The current crisis dates from June 10, when the Flemish Christian Democrats, who demand greater autonomy for Flanders, came in first with one-fifth of the seats in Parliament. Yves Leterme, the party leader, would have become prime minister if he had been able to put together a coalition government. But he was rejected by French speakers because of his contempt for them — an oddity since his own father is a French speaker. He further alienated them, and even some moderate Flemish leaders, on Belgium’s national holiday, July 21, when he appeared unable — or unwilling — to sing Belgium’s national anthem. Belgium’s mild-mannered, 73-year-old king, Albert II, has struggled to mediate, even though under the Constitution he has no power other than to appoint ministers and rubber-stamp laws passed by Parliament. He has welcomed a parade of politicians and elder statesmen to the Belvedere palace in Brussels, successively appointing four political leaders to resolve the crisis. All have failed. On one level, there is normalcy and calm here. The country is governed largely by a patchwork of regional bureaucracies, so trains run on time, mail is delivered, garbage is collected, the police keep order. Officials from the former government — including former Prime Minister Guy Verhhofstadt, who is ethnically Flemish — report for work every day and continue to collect salaries. The former government is allowed to pay bills, carry out previously decided policies and make urgent decisions on peace and security. Earlier this month, for example, the governing Council of Ministers approved the deployment of 80 to 100 peacekeeping troops to Chad and a six-month extension for 400 Belgian peacekeepers stationed in Lebanon under United Nations mandates. But a new government will be needed to approve a budget for next year. Certainly, there are reasons Belgium is likely to stay together, at least in the short term. Brussels, the country’s overwhelmingly French-speaking capital, is in Flanders and historically was a Flemish-speaking city. There would be overwhelming local and international resistance to turning Brussels into the capital of a country called Flanders. The economies of the two regions are inextricably intertwined, and separation would be a fiscal nightmare. Then there is the issue of the national debt (90 percent of Belgium’s gross domestic product) and how to divide it equitably. But there is also deep resentment in Flanders that its much healthier economy must subsidize the French-speaking south, where unemployment is double that of the north. [A poll by the private Field Research Institute released on Tuesday indicated that 66 percent of the inhabitants of Flanders believe that the country will split up “sooner or later,” and 46 percent favor such a division. The poll, which was conducted by telephone, interviewed 1,000 people.] French speakers, meanwhile, favor the status quo. “Ladies and gentlemen, everything’s fine!” exclaimed Mayor Jacques Étienne of Namur, the Walloon capital, at the annual Walloon festival last Saturday. Acknowledging that talk of a “divorce” had returned, he reminded the audience that this was a day to celebrate, saying, “We have to, if possible, forget about our personal worries and the anxieties of our time.” Belgium has suffered through previous political crises and threats of partition. But a number of political analysts believe this one is different. The turning point is widely believed to have been last December when RTBF, a French-language public television channel, broadcast a hoax on the breakup of Belgium. The two-hour live television report showed images of cheering, flag-waving Flemish nationalists and crowds of French-speaking Walloons preparing to leave, while also reporting that the king had fled the country. Panicked viewers called the station, and the prime minister’s office condemned the program as irresponsible and tasteless. But for the first time, in the public imagination, the possibility of a breakup seemed real. Contributing to the difficulty in forming a new government now is the fact that all 11 parties in the national Parliament are local, not national, parties. The country has eight regional or language-based parliaments. Oddly, there is no panic just now, just exasperation and a hint of embarrassment. “We must not worry too much,” said Baudouin Bruggeman, a 55-year-old schoolteacher, as he sipped Champagne at the festival in Namur. “Belgium has survived on compromise since 1830. Everyone puffs himself up in this banana republic. You have to remember that this is Magritte country, the country of surrealism. Anything can happen.” var tcdacmd="dt"; __________________ Toen de Antwerpenaar Hendrik Conscience in de negentiende eeuw zijn beklag maakte over ‘vreemdelingen’, bedoelde hij daarmee West-Vlaanderen.

23 september 2007, 22:44	#4
HAMC Perm. Vertegenwoordiger VN Geregistreerd: 14 februari 2007 Berichten: 19.593	In het algemeen is het wel goed vind ik. __________________ Verschaeve

23 september 2007, 22:50	#5
baseballpolitieker Perm. Vertegenwoordiger VN Geregistreerd: 13 september 2006 Berichten: 10.530	ALLE grote kranten hebben het al over ons gehad, hoe gaat dat binnen 50 dagen zijn... __________________ POLITICS.BE 2:http://www.politiek.messageboard.be Het volk dient de stem van de partijen te zijn, en de partijen niet de stem van het volk! De nieuwe Vlaamse Partij! Vrij Vlaanderen of neem eens een kijkje op ons geüpdate forum:Forum Vrij Vlaanderen

24 september 2007, 11:37	#8
Ik-haat-afwassen Vreemdeling Geregistreerd: 2 januari 2006 Berichten: 90	Nu die taart nog in de drager zijn gezicht, en het zou een veel betere foto zijn. __________________ Ik hou van koken, maar wie wil mijnen afwas doen

24 september 2007, 15:34	#19
Derk de Tweede Secretaris-Generaal VN Geregistreerd: 28 januari 2005 Locatie: Ergens tussen Dollard en Duinkerken Berichten: 37.539	Welke crisis? Biertekort, friettekort of Dronkoers heeft een nieuwe wagen... __________________

23 september 2007, 22:37	#3
Hertog van Gelre Perm. Vertegenwoordiger VN Geregistreerd: 31 augustus 2005 Locatie: De Nederlanden Berichten: 16.099	Leuk zoals de RTBF wordt beschreven. Als Belgie splitst is de RTBF degene geweest die de geesten ervoor rijp heeft gemaakt... Zullen er koppen gaan rollen bij die omroep?