The people have spoken

From the first tentative results yesterday afternoon it was clear that the Flemish Nationalists, NVA, would do at least as well as recent polls suggested. At the end of the day, they did better.

Looking at where they got their votes (a clear view on shifts in voting behavior is only one of the good points of a representative (and obligatory) voting system as it exists in Belgium) it's not as disastrous as it sounds. The result is mainly a restacking of the right, seeing as two big "losers" are the Christian Democrats, CD&V (who had grown the last couple of years through an alliance with the NVA that turned out unworkable in the end, and now the nail in their coffin), and Vlaams Belang, Flemish Nationalists and xenophobe party. I'm heartened to see that the free-fall the left was in the last couple of years has halted. That was one of my biggest fears, not to wake up in a Belgium where Bart De Wever was the biggest man, but where the socialists and greens shrunk ever more.

I'm annoyed that on the Flemish news site they only give results of Flanders, you even have to dig for articles on Brussels or Wallonia. It were federal elections, and as a Belgian me I'd like my tax-euro subsidized news giving me a view on how Belgium, and not only Flanders, will be today. In Wallonia it was rapidly clear that the Walloon socialists were recuperating nicely from the punches they got in the last couple of elections, as polls had suggested.

As one French-speaking twitterer said yesterday:

Bart De Wever doesn't acknowledge the existence of the Belgian king⁽¹⁾, and the king doesn't acknowledge the existence of Bart De Wever⁽²⁾: that's Belgian surrealism.

Today will be a very interesting day. Obviously, it's De Wever's turn, but how will the king handle it? Will De Wever, with his monster score, accept that he'll have to work with the Walloon socialists?The CD&V hope they'll be working together again with NVA, but then De Wever will be working with the party that screwed everything up; the only big party not involved in the debacle of the last three years are the Flemish socialists. But that's like screwing over the rightist swing-voters that delivered his monster score. Ah, politics, definitely more thrilling than football.


⁽¹⁾ he's fervently republican
⁽²⁾ the king left him out of talks before, but what else can you do with someone who doesn't acknowledge your existence?