Tomorrow we will hold the semi-official record in government formation negotiations. As there is no United Nations agency assigned with the task of keeping track of these things we can only put our faith in the media. So we read that soon the world record in government formation will be in the hands of Belgium, succeeding... Iraq. Following its first democratic elections in decades after the reign of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi politicians needed 249 days to come to a mutual understanding. Alas Belgians have not yet succeeded.
It doesn't necessarily need to scare you that Belgium isn't able to form a government any faster than a torn-down, bombed-back-to-the-stone-age, and definitely more humanitarian troubled country like Iraq. After all Belgium has got quite an interesting ethnic composition itself. Indeed its very nature, dating from its composition at the Vienna conference and being allowed to continue to exist after the Belgian Revolution, is one of mingling languages and cultures to keep the Germans out of France. --Note from the author: what a success that turned out to be. Twice.-- So how surprising is it that a country so oddly composed is unable to form a government? Quite surprising actually, cause it worked in the past.
A full history of language based disagreements in Belgium would take us too far for the night so let's just run over the events of the last attempt to form us a government. It is actually fairly easy cause not that much happened.
Trouble --or bliss, depending which side you prayed to God would
win-- started in the end of April 2010 when the Belgian federal government fell over the long unsettled issue of the election district of Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde, in which French speaking citizens are granted the right to fill in their ballots in French. Because of this insane flexibility --what were they thinking?-- the Flemish fear they will be overrun by Walloons and Bruxellois who want to take over Flanders. Thus the Flemish want to separate the election district into a Flemish part of Halle-Vilvoorde, other than for voting already completely adherent to Flanders, and a bilingual district for Brussels. The negotiating over this Achilles' heel of Belgian 'communitary' politics was the reason every Belgian government to date never got anything done. Even before it existed. Walloons use it as a bargaining chip to demand the expansion of Brussels and Flemish to prove how evil Walloons are.
It was this same trouble politicians were trying to fix when the newly elected and awfully young president of the liberal party decided to remove all doubt on who was in power. He pulled the plug out of the negotiations and went smile into the cameras talking about how his party had been the only one responsible enough to acknowledge that facing the current composition of government, no agreement would ever be found.
Little did he know that to win elections the 'undertaking of responsible acts' had just been shoved aside in favor of making funny appearances in game shows. The president of the Flemish nationalist movement made the impression to some two million Flemish viewers of being the guy you want to grab a beer with on Friday night, and the president of the Walloon socialist party starred in his own reality show. The outcome of the elections couldn't have been more awful for the king, whose only remaining official power was the appointment of the people to lead the negotiations. I bet he wished he had no duties left.
The noble king spared none of his imagination and came up with a whole array of negotiation formats, appointing royal formators, negotiators, scouts, informators and mediators but none proved to be solid enough to bring any of the egos closer. None of the self-proclaimed problems between Flemish, Walloons, Bruxellois and German speakers in politicians' heads ever found any popular support as the people joined each other in protest marches, parties, beard growings and sex strikes.
As we are going into the final day before our record, politicians remain as far removed from their people as they have ever been. The Belgian art of reaching a compromise has been long forgotten and every concession is regarded a weakness. We are all growing further apart from each other, only to find that after almost 250 days of negotiating we are back at the point we started. Is this the way we want this country to make sense?
As a final proof in my reasoning: in what country other than Belgium could an amazing guy like my best friend Raf, who just recently won the Peace Center award for his poem 'Ongewapend', stay single for so long?
