Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue

SCORE!!!

OMG, at last. After 192 days we have a government.
Well, sorta... à la belge, it is as usual a compromise.

Belgium's new intermediary government will be sworn in on Friday. Not the final government of course, because they have until March to negotiate that one.

Interestingly enough, this government is made up of winners and losers of the past election, and it is asymmetric (meaning the number of parties is not equal on either side of the language divide, as the Flemish socialists declared that they preferred to be in the opposition).

The new prime minister is the old prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt.

And the French liberals must be feeling extremely blue that the French-speaking socialists somehow managed to wheedle themselves into this government, in spite of considerable wrangling on everyone's behalf to keep them out of the coalition.

So where does the borrowed part come in? I think we could say that those are the French-speaking incontournable socialists, who were used as some kind of super glue to make this coalition work.

Enuff' said: time for some decision-making. And there are a lot of hasty decisions to make: before the end of the year an agreement has to be reached with GPs so that next year they cannot charge up exorbitant amounts for normal care... before Friday, Belgium has to request an exemption from a European Directive regarding the non-discrimination in insurance, or women's insurance rates of every type will soar through the roof... and the list goes on...
Nose to the grindstone dearies!