Sniff sniff, who’s there?

The sober tweets of the party-presidents, without images, Magnette not even in his own name, and with a minimum of what is called ‘engagements’ in twitter-statistics.

 Timid attempts to form a new Belgian government, 386 days after the last elections, ended yesterday in a timid report on recent very tentative talks. It ended also on a refusal of the present prime minister Sophie Wilmes to pick it up as an eventual ‘formateur’ of a government that would succeed hers. If nothing follows, time might now be running out quite rapidly.

 

 Two extremely sober tweets of two party presidents around 17 hours yesterday were the only official confirmation of what was leaked in the media a few hours before. The two socialist party presidents, Paul Magnette (PS, French-speaking) and Conner Rousseau (SP.A, Flemish), who since 8 May had taken the initiative to sound out the other parties (except the extreme-left and the extreme-right) about the prospects of a new government, announced that they had presented their report to the present prime minister Sophie Wilmes and had had a ‘productive meeting’ with her. Only Rousseau gave a short interview to one journalist afterwards.

 

 Wilmès did not communicate officially, but the media learned almost immediately from her party-president, Georges-Louis Bouchez, that ‘you only designate a formateur when there is a formula for a coalition and in this case it is not visible yet.’ The content of the report itself was not leaked, but according to some media it indicated a coalition of the three traditional parties (socialists, liberals and Christian democrats) on both sides of the language border as the best solution.

 

 The problem with that coalition is that it does not have a majority in the parliament, only 71 of the 150 seats. The only possibilities for support outside are the Flemish nationalists of N-VA (24 seats) or the Greens (FR and NL, together 21 seats). The difficult choice between one of these partners, which hampered all talks up to now, might in that way be avoided. But it is unclear how far both external partners have agreed with this scenario, and whom of them will give the necessary support to install the government with a majority. A simple abstention by one of these groups might be enough.

 

 The next days will make clear if something will follow. The rejection of a central role by Wilmès does not bode well. Nor does an incident yesterday within the Flemish Greens, where the group leader in the Flemish Parliament proposed an all parties-coalition, including Greens and N-VA, but was immediately rebuffed by his party president.  

 

 Meanwhile anger among the population is rising steadily after the bad decisions and communications in the last phase of the corona-crisis, after more and more revelations about mishandlings of the crisis, and after testimonials – including from one federal minister – about the difficulties to overcome the fragmentation of powers in an institutional landscape ravaged by six ad hoc institutional reforms over the last fifty years. The anger on the economic recession might follow soon.