How to cope with an emergency?

 Paul Magnette, the president of the Parti Socialiste, on Sunday morning, after electronically consulting his party council, torpedoed the proposal to form a new emergency government of one year. Bart De Wever, the president of the Flemish nationalist N-VA, had formulated that idea one day earlier, to tackle the corona-crisis. Magnette will now support, together with the Greens, the caretaking minority government of Sophie Wilmès from outside, which will that way have a majority of 3 seats in the parliament.

 The six party presidents of the liberals, socialists (each time two parties), Flemish Christian democrats and Flemish nationalists discussed the idea of forming a new emergency government for one year until 3.30 am on Sunday morning. Technicians were ordered to continue the discussion on the details, before a new meeting would be convened at 14 hours in the rooms of the federal Parliament.

 But then, at about 11 am, Paul Magnette (picture RTL-Tvi, during his intervention in the talkshow) was to be seen via a visio-link from his party-headquarters – where he had just presided an electronic council of his party – in a political talkshow of RTL-Tvi, the French-speaking commercial broadcaster, where Georges-Louis Bouchez, the president of the liberal MR and Jean-Marc Nollet, the president of Ecolo, were present in the studio. He immediately stressed again that ‘you do not change the captain of the ship in the midst of the storm’ and attacked De Wever because he had ‘put up a scandalous proposal in function of his personal ambitions at such a moment’.

 He then said that the present caretaking government of Sophie Wilmès (with only MR, the Flemish liberals of Open VLD and the Flemish Christian Democrats of CD&V in it, and commanding only 38 of the 150 seats in Parliament) was doing an excellent job and had not to be replaced. He proposed to support it with the 19 seats of the Parti Socialiste for ‘all the measures needed to combat the corona-crisis’, and added that he was certain the Greens would do the same. Ecolo and the Flemish Greens, who form one bilingual political group in the Parliament, have together 21 seats.

 Nollet, the leader of Ecolo, immediately supported that idea in the studio, as did Bouchez. The Flemish parties reacted surprised and a little angry to the new proposal. Jan Jambon, the chief minister of Flanders, from the N-VA, reacted in another talkshow, on the Flemish public broadcaster VRT, bitterly: ‘We are the biggest party of the country. What can we do more to be accepted?’.

 But then, in another surprising twist, the six party-presidents of the previous night were meeting again at 14h. There seemed to have been some angry exchanges at the beginning, especially between De Wever and Magnette, but nobody left the room. On the contrary, at the end of the afternoon, the Greens joined the discussions. And around 21hours a press conference was announced for later in the evening by the federal negotiators Patrick Dewael and Sabine Laruelle. That suggested that we are still close to a breakthrough, although probably another one than 24 hours before.