Bis repetita placent?

 

One week before election day the polls in Belgium – often too cheap to be professional - have once again demonstrated how unreliably they are. The Friday evening television news-shows and the Saturday morning newspapers were full of scores going in all directions. The Flemish Christian democrats are the main victim: their results show a gap from 15 (in one poll) to 20 % (in another one) of the votes, which makes a difference between staying a large party and the risk of becoming irrelevant. Worst is the impression that the polls in at least some way reflect the preferences of the customer.

Nevertheless, some trends do not change. One is that the Flemish nationalists in Flanders are by far in the lead, with probably over 30 % of the votes and with some luck also – and not unlike the British fleet hundred years ago – twice as big as the main contender. This confirms what happened in the  tv-debates last weekend, when the leader of the nationalist NVA, Bart De Wever, talked the man who pretended to be his main challenger, the Christian democratic chief minister of the Flemish region Kris Peeters, into pieces.

The latter should now hope that its party can recuperate some of the general sympathy for the former Christian democratic and hugely popular prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene (73), who died suddenly on Thursday while travelling in Brittany and who will have a state funeral two days before election day. The other big trend in Flanders is the fragmentation of the left, with the social democratic SPA – and maybe also the union wing of the Christian democrats - losing heavily to the Greens and the former maoïst extreme left PVDA. The latter, although never represented in parliament in the past, has received a lot of exposure in the media, that are fond of  the strong rhetoric of its leader.

The situation in French-speaking part of Belgium is more complicated. Among the three million inhabitants of the Wallony-region, the socialist party (PS) will stay the largest with about 30 % (38 % in the elections of 2010). The liberals (MR) would obtain about 22 %, and two other parties, the greens and the christan democrats, a few percentages above 10. Almost certainly the formerly maoïst PTB (the same party as the PVDA in Flanders) will enter into parliament, with scores that waver between 6 and 9 %. A sixth party, the quite chaotic and extreme right Parti populaire, might also gain some seats (it had one in 2010).

Among the one million citizens of the (mainly French-speaking) city of Brussels, the liberals have a slight lead on the socialists, but both with results just above 20 %. The Brussels nationalists (FDF), the Greens and the Christian democrats compete for the third place. For a long time the French-speaking part of Belgium was the most stable, with only two parties needed to form a government (in Flanders it has been 3 or 4 since 1999) and the socialists clearly in the lead. Now it is struck as much as the north by fragmentation and instability.

Nevertheless last Monday the leader of the French-speaking socialists, Paul Magnette, the mayor of Wallony’s largest city Charleroi and half a year younger than De Wever, demonstrated his ability to match the Flemish nationalist leader in a passionate tv-debate with him that lasted more than an hour (picture). In the end Magnette won narrowly on points, because he continued to smile and joke whereas De Wever turned into bitterness. Under pressure, the latter accentuated his institutional agenda and neglected to elaborate on the economic reforms he and his party propose.

So it seems Belgium is heading for a scenario on the day after the elections that is quite similar to the one of 2010, when it took 540 days to form a new government. The unreliability of the polls is now the best hope that history will not repeat itself.

Never aspire to become prime minister?

After the Flemish nationalist leader Bart De Wever,  his main rival, the Flemish christian democrat Kris Peeters, has now also definitely ruled out that he wants to become the next prime minister of Belgium. This may well be the strongest symptom that Belgium is nearing a new big crisis.

In every democratic country governments are appointed through elections. In these elections groups of politicians who think more or less the same about societal issues, organise a party, write a program with proposals,  designate a leader they want to see taking up the reins of the next government. And if a party become the biggest group in the new parliament, it is their leader who becomes the new prime minister.

This key-rule of modern democracy is now under threat in Belgium. Already in 2010 Bart De Wever, the president of the Flemish nationalists,  after a few months gave up any attempt to become prime minister, although his party had won a surprisingly big electoral victory and suddenly had the largest group in parliament. This was, De Wever said, because king Albert II and the Belgian establishment did everything to prevent a Flemish nationalist of taking up command of the country.  But many saw this as a blunt refusal to take any role in the government of a country most people in his party would love to see  – at least in the long term – disappear.

The latter view seems now to have found new proof in a remark De Wever made on the 13^th of April, before a Dutch audience in Amsterdam: ‘the worst that can happen to you in Belgium is to win elections. Or even worse: to become prime minister. The ‘16’ in the housenumber of the prime minister’s office (rue de la Loi 16 in Brussels,see picture rf) is about the percentage of votes you keep after you’ve held the office’.

Besides of being inexact – parties of the last five prime ministers in Belgium lost about 1 to 6 % of the votes when they were kicked-out after two terms, whereas in the Netherlands the loss for the last three amounted each time to 13 to 14 % - the remark confirms how De Wever has throughout the present campaign consistently refused to say that he wants to become the next prime minister. Opinion polls suggest that his party will by far be the largest in the next parliament.

 Now Kris Peeters, up to now the chief minister of Flanders region and the main candidate of the Christian democrats, has confirmed in an interview on Saturday (the 3th of May) that he wants to stay where he is and ‘under no condition will switch to the federal government’.  He too does not want to be prime minister of Belgium, not even when his party, one of the most traditional establishment parties of the country, will be victorious.

That makes two of a sort. In what the polls expect to be the hierarchy of political groups in parliament after the 25^th of May, the first two parties in Flanders – nr.1 and nr. 4 in the whole of Belgium – refuse to propose a prime minister to lead the state they are campaigning in. That leaves the post almost certainly to a candidate of the French-speaking minority of the country. Probably the most remarkable thing about this is that nobody in the media or in the political class seems to bother.

The second biggest group in the federal parliament will probably be the Parti socialiste (PS) again, with the outgoing prime minister Elio di Rupo – who filled the leadership-vacuum left by De Wever in 2010 – as its main candidate. The third one are the French-speaking liberals (MR), where Didier Reynders, the minister of Foreign Affairs and deputy-prime minister for the last 15 years, is quite keen to make a promotion. But the latter is heavily contested in his own party and has many enemies all over the place. And the former could well be put aside in his own party, if – as the polls predict – the electorate in French-speaking Belgium reward his leadership of the country with a big defeat.

Seven years ago no less than five candidates contested the next prime ministership in Belgium. Nowadays more and more parties seem to consider that job as a political risk better not to take. The fact that not only the greatest of these parties, the Flemish nationalists, but also the second largest in Flanders, the very traditional Christian democrats who occupied the prime minister’s office for 40 out of the 70 years since 1944, say they are no longer interested, may well be a bad omen for what yet has to come.