maandag 2 februari 2009

Political crisis, possible roots


I will try to give a summary of the situation and my opinion about it.





For years we have issues on our political diary that are dealing with the fundamental structures of the country, but they have been postponed till today because no politicians were able to form a satisfying agreement for all groups of interests.
This themes were essentially about tensions between the regions belgium exists about. The fact that they were postponed for such a long time leaded to dissatisfaction of an Someone found an original solution for the crisis.
non-ignorable and growing Buyers were advised to buy the land in pieces.
proportion of the population.


The two, at least in my opinion, main issues are: although in Flanders there is a bigger population, the Belgium parliament gives a bigger amount of the national money to Walloon. Futhermore, according to a
study there is an enduring stream of money from the north of the country (Flanders), to the south (Walloon). This creates tensions in the population.

The other issue is the fact that a voting district,
Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde, forms an inunderstandable exception in the belgium country structure because it constitutes of two regions and communities: the officially bilingual Brussels one, and a part of the Flanders one, where Dutch is spoken. Some inhabitants of Flanders even went to court with this problem and the judge declared they were right. Politicians got the time till 2007 to change this, otherwise subsequent votings would be illegal.

Especially the civilians of Flanders were fed up with this situation, leading to an increase of votes for the party "
Vlaams Belang" (earlier called "Vlaams Blok") with frontleader Filip De Winter. This party advocates strongly Flemish cultural traditions. More concretely, it insists that immigrants should adapt our culture and, more importantly for my account, that Flanders should go independent.


Separation of Flanders (represented with a lion) & Walloon (cock).


In answer, other politicical parties formed a cordon sanitaire, preventing the Vlaams Belang from being part of a governmental coalition for ethical reasons. But the votes for the party only raised. So some other parties investigated the cause of the success of this party and adopted some viewpoints of this, making it more moderately right. This also led to the origin of new parties such as LDD (Lijst De Decker) (Dutch) and "Nee" (Dutch) and to a different approach in CD&V, the Christen Democratic Party.