Last night many Belgians went to bed with a heavy heart - those would be from the "South." Others - the "North" - may well have partied. But on the 150th day of painful negotiations, the winners of the June elections trying to form a center-right coalition government of Dutch-speaking Flemish parties (the "North") and Francophone parties of the "South" had reached an impasse. It was worsened by a linguistic-line vote in a committee of the national parliament, in favor of the "scission" or division of a federal electoral district called "BHV."
BHV currently combines the largely French-speaking capital Brussels with the surrounding suburbs of Halle and Vilvoorde, which are largely - but not exclusively - Dutch-speaking. The francophone deputies walked out, and the Flemish majority voted in essence to deprive francophone residents of the surrounding suburbs the chance to vote for French-speaking candidates. Now uniquely Belgian constitutional safeguards will be called into play - "the Panic Button" is our favorite - which will delay any further action on effectively disenfranchising citizens (the Flemish politicians would simply say that the French speakers are free to vote for Flemish candidates).
All of a sudden, what used to be simply a quiet sign of Belgian unity -- draping a tricolor national flag on your balcony -- now is a topic of conversation at the local shops: will Belgium remain a country? In its relatively short history, Belgium has gone from being dominated by the French-speaking south (Wallonia, now somewhat of a rust belt) to a resurgent Flanders in the north becoming a high tech (and wealthier) majority.
It's all so confusing if you're not living here, and even if you live here as an expat (all told, we've lived in Belgium upwards of nine years), the byzantine ways of Belgian politics can escape even the wonks among us. I know that scission translates into splitting (in this case, making two electoral districts where there used to be just BHV), but I can't help seeing how closely the word resembles "secession" of Gone With the Wind fame. North vs South. Secession - sorry, division -- is it really that serious? And why should anyone not living here care?
Well, because we're talking about the capital of Europe. Headquarters for the European Union, NATO, and other trans-national institutions. Home to myriad foreign companies, NGOs, and lobbyists who do business with said organizations. Apart from the FCO in London and at Foggy Bottom, I'm not sure who is paying attention to Belgium's travails in the English-speaking world. Pat Buchanan is, which I found interesting. The publisher of American Conservative magazine has his own website and blog, and - perhaps not altogether surprisingly - has a soft spot for the ultra-right "Vlams Belang" Party (think of a Flemish version of France's Jean-Marie Le Pen) leaders. Deploring their getting roughed up at an anti-immigrant rally, Buchanan notes:
Not only is the parliamentary situation becoming intolerable to Flanders, there is rage over the recent socialist government's having brought in French-speaking North Africans to give Walloons control of Brussels, which, though in Flanders, has a French-speaking majority.
Now, I live here and think that I follow the Belgian political scene reasonably closely, but this decidedly racist agenda is one that only seems to have a following among the Vlams Belang wingnuts. In addition to which it is just plain wrong: Brussels is a self-governing region, albeit surrounded by Flanders, and has been French-speaking for ages, before North African immigrants were a feature of urban life. Too bad for Pat Buchanan, whose American Conservative magazine carries some worthwhile "old fashioned" conservative writers whose views on Iraq would not be out of place in, say, lefty "Mother Jones."
So, on the eve of 5 months of post-election wrangling (a record), an additional element of linguistic grievance has been added to a difficult agenda. As foreigners, we would feel a bit hesitant about hanging a red, yellow, and black flag from our balcony - but we settled here by choice, and kind of want the country to hang together. To be continued.