Ce plat pays qui est le mien.. .

I suppose I should have posted something weeks ago about the fact that Belgium is falling apart at the seams again. In fact, the government has yet again fallen in our little banana republic (visions of the Italian government, which seemed to get knocked down and then get up again, because you're never gonna keep me down... )



Yes, the lyrics of this song are quite appropriate when you look at the situation. So what's the status? PM resigned. King told him, no way, josé and hasta la vista, Yves. Then HM appointed three old crocodiles/former statesmen as 'negotiators'. And conveniently, he forgot to appoint a Flemish negotiator, thereby sending the message to a few million people that their opinion is completely irrelevant in this matter. But that's OK, we'll just continue to pay our taxes, so the other half can live comfortably off benefit.

Where will it all end, you ask? Well, since my name is not Madame Esmeralda, I have no clue. If you told me that in a year from now, Belgium will have been disbanded, and consist of two individual, or even three mini republics, I might be inclined to believe you. But then, it was an artificial construction to begin with. Let's toss a bit of France, a bit of The Netherlands and some post-war Germany into a big ole salad dresser, shaken not stirred, and see what comes out of this whole roly-poley? Oh, and while we're at it, let's get some prince without a cause or a throne and invest him as the king of this comedy. Ah, men in charge.

So taking bets now: will we have a government by the time I come back from holiday (20/08) or will we be declaring the Flemish Republic this time next year?

I shudder at the mere thought of inflicting that upon the world.

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!

L'orange bleue est morte, vive l'orange bleue?

Tomorrow will mark the 185th day since the elections without a government.

The coalition broker resigned on 1 December. The former PM, Guy Verhofstadt, has now been assigned the job of running the country (which he's been doing for the last six months anyway) and trying to put together a workable coalition. And frankly, that's all I can tell you because at this point I have no idea what's going on... I'm mystified, everyone is mystified.

Are we to have a government? Is there a coalition in the pipeline? Are they just revamping the previous coalition into something workable? Oh, wait, I get it, this is your typical Belgian compromise in the making...

I watch, eyes wide shut, and wait. This country's regions are on a major collision course, with every statement being used as an excuse to have a major flare-up.

Vaudeville at its best. Belgium as we've always known it. Business as usual.

Ceci n'est pas une orange bleue - Let's stick together

No, not a reference to the movie about Tintin and the blue oranges. Nor have I been dipping too deep in Magritte's surrealist oeuvre. Although surrealism is the only label that applies to the situation in Belgium. Incredibly so, yet another tentative to broker a government coalition has failed. So the past 24 hours have been all about colours, about greens, and reds, and purples, and oranges, oranges that might be excluded, blues that will not govern with reds, greens who don't mesh well with yellows... A veritable rainbow fest!

All I know is that if there is a protest march, I'm heavily considering marching along. The revolution which created Belgium started with an opera (La Muette de Portici), and it looks as if Belgium will cease to exist as a result of a farce.

Meanwhile blogger Gerrit Six strikes again: after Belgium, he has now put Belgian citizenship on eBay.

While I was writing this, I was reminded of this rather appropriate song:


So maybe this is something we all need to think about, 175 days after our elections. Cross the linguistic border a little more, enjoy one another's culture a little more. Heck, if the Germans and the British could do it over Christmas during WWI in a football friendly in no-man's land, then why can't we?

171 days of gloom and doom - whatever happened to Belgium, the surprise package of Europe?

One hundred and seventy-one days and one minute have passed since our national elections and yes, incredible as it may seem, our politicians still seem to think that they have all the time in the world to bicker about a new coalition.

The simple question of why a temporary government hasn't been put in place is so evident that one does not even dare ask it at this point.

No revolution has broken out. The people aren't screaming in the streets. No cars are being burnt (for that you have to head to the Paris banlieues these days, I am told, if it's fireworks and adrenalin that you are looking for).

In fact Belgians are going about their business as usual. Eating and drinking like true rabelaisians, preparing to spend money, etc. Incidentally, did you know that Belgium numbers 135,000 very fortunate dollar millionaires among its population? This puts it in twelfth place worldwide. Not bad for a country, whose impact in the EU was cited by MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit as being "zéro" today. Now I know that Belgium is particularly good at scoring "nul points" in the Eurovision song extravaganza, but Mr CB's comment is stretching it a tad, don't you think?

So is Belgium irrelevant? Would you miss it? Did you even know it existed?

Antwerp mayor says 'sorry' to Jewish community - has anything really changed?

Interesting news item:

Yesterday our mayor, socialist Patrick Janssens, apologized to the Jewish community for the municipal government's role during World War II in a video message to a congress on the Nazi extermination of Jews during WWII.
Recent research seems to indicate that Antwerp officials and police were actively collaborating with the German occupying forces at the time. With more than 1,200 Jews rounded up for subsequent deportation to various concentration camps in Europe, it would seem that the Antwerp police assisted the Germans during the summer of 1942 in tracking down Jewish people in Antwerp and later actively rounding them up.
The Brussels municipal council and police apparently refused any collaboration.
About 65 percent of Antwerp's Jewish community were deported during the Nazi occupation.

All this during the same weekend that thousands of members of the white supremacy organization Blood and Honour converged on Wolfsdonk in Aarschot for a concert featuring neo-nazi bands... There is currently no ban on such meetings and organizations in Belgium, which is why this meet could take place.

Sometimes I think this country just doesn't get it and is unable to looks its war past in the face.
I should probably say something here about communitaurian differences (Walloon vs. Flemish) and link it to the current problems that the various parties are having trying to form a coalition and subsequently a government, but frankly, I am so exasperated and ashamed about the lack of unity at political level that I don't want to talk about it.