After days full of
rumours Bart De Wever (picture VRT), the leader of the Flemish nationalist N-VA, the greatest
party in Belgium, proposed Saturday afternoon to form an ‘emergency government’
for one year, with the battle against the corona-crisis and its consequences as
sole program. He explicitly invited the second party, the Parti Socialiste. The
latter at 7 pm issued a tweet wherein it stated that it did not want ‘to change
the captain in times of crisis’. Nevertheless talks seems to have started later
in the evening.
De Wever mobilised the Flemish tv-camera’s
Saturday afternoon outside his house in Antwerp. In interviews he explained
that, due to the corona-crisis, he now proposed the rapid formation of an ‘emergency
cabinet’ with at least the two largest parties in it, N-VA and PS, and with a
majority of parliamentary seats in both communities. That cabinet should stay
on for one year and focus on the health crisis and its consequences, especially
the measures needed to avoid or temper an economic crash. He compared the
events these days with the financial crisis of 2008 and said : ‘It is like in a
war, you have to put your disputes aside to beat together the enemy.’
‘Eventually’ De Wever added, ‘such a cabinet
could prepare during that one year the necessary reforms to make this country
function again’. If that did not succeed, he said, there was in his eyes no
need to continue such a cabinet. He did not explicitly said that early
elections would follow in such a case, but everybody understood it in this way.
Some media concluded that De Wever had implicitly proposed himself as prime minister
of the emergency cabinet, although he himself did not address that issue in his
public declarations.
Rumours had been circulating that the two
royal negotiators, Patrick Dewael and Sabine Laruelle, after searching for days
to form a centre-left coalition, on Thursday suddenly explored the possibility
of an emergency-coalition again, this time with N-VA and PS. De Wever said on
Saturday that he had made his proposal already ‘a few days ago inside’ and that
he now came out because of numerous press leaks.
Indeed,
the new president of the Flemish socialists, Conner Rousseau, had tweeted
earlier today, that ‘if things do not move today, nothing will happen on
Monday’. Monday is the day that Dewael and Laruelle would report their
conclusions to king Philip. The remarkable thing on Rousseau’s tweet was that
it was written in French.
The Parti Socialiste issued at 7 pm its own
tweet: ‘in case of a crisis the biggest urgency is that responsible politicians
give priority to the health of the citizen above other considerations. Changing
the captain in the midst of the storm would be irresponsible.’ That was
interpreted as a wish to keep the present caretaking Prime Minister, Sophie
Wilmès, in the driving seat. Wilmès is from the French-speaking liberals, but
her party leader, Georges-Louis Bouchez, normally quite active on twitter, did
not react immediately.
According to press leaks De Wever and Paul
Magnette seem to have met on Thursday and agreed on the idea of the emergency
cabinet. Magnette then worked it out in a note, that was not appreciated by
Bouchez, who fears to be sidelined by the big two, whereas in the caretaking
cabinet he has the prime minister and seven other ministers. The leaders of the
two liberal and two socialists parties met on Friday evening, without result,
which might explain the tweet of Rousseau.
The latest on Saturday evening was that
liberals, socialists, N-VA and Christian democrats were meeting and discussing,
probably at the start of a long night. Together they could command a majority
of 90 seats of the 150 in the federal parliament.
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