Question the media

It's always interesting to look up foreign news articles on Belgium, because they usually convey more about the foreign country/news service than Belgium. Sometimes they're also somewhat funny, and sometimes they are shockingly wrong. For instance, after the train crash in February, AP sent an article into the world which gave the name of our king as Baudouin. Two days later (17 Feb) they corrected it:

AP - In a Feb. 15 story about the collision of two Belgian trains, The Associated Press erroneously reported the name of the Belgian monarch who visited the crash scene. His correct name is King Albert, not King Baudouin.

Now good old king Baudouin has been dead since 1993. Sort of like saying Clinton is still the US president... I don't quite know if I should be troubled, annoyed or saddened by such things. Shouldn't reporters of reputable news agencies double-check their facts? Has that new culture where speed is more important than correctness, as we know it from the internet and tweethood, corrupted journalism through and through?

But anyways, without much further ado, some notes on foreign "insights" into the NVA's landslide win and the future of Belgium:

NY Times:

But it is likely to take months to negotiate a new coalition, raising the prospect that Belgium will be struggling to assemble its own government at precisely the time it is supposed to be steering Europe out of a deep crisis

I don't know where journalists first heard this, and why they keep perpetuating such overblown fears. Believing this, is completely ignoring the Lisbon Treaty, and presuming that the presidency of Europe has more power than it actually has. A country can certainly give accents to certain issues during its presidency, but let's not pretend that the presidency of the council is anything like heading the European Commission, or that Belgian politicians will actually have to do so much more than play host. And playing hosts we Belgians can do amidst whatever internal crisis. We've got fries, chocolate and beer, for chrissakes. What else do you need for a party?

In addition to Mr. de Wever’s party, which got nearly 30 percent of the vote, Flanders gave 12.5 percent of its vote to the far-right separatists of Vlaams Belang and about 4 percent to another populist party, meaning that nearly half of the Flemish electorate voted for separatists. Mr. de Wever’s success appeared to come at the expense of the Christian Democrats of the current prime minister and his Liberal allies.

I resent this half-assed number game with half-assed deduction. As I said in a previous post, a lot of the NVA votes came from the parties they mention, and hence were already voting far-right and separatist. It's more a restacking of vote in the right wing than a gain in right-wing voters.
The most important numbers are those of the Chamber, not the Senate . After all, the Chamber has more power than the Senate over the government and actually makes the laws. It's also probably why people give a vote for the senate quicker to the NVA (or Vlaams Belang) than for their vote for the Chamber.
And then you have to take in account that two cartels in the previous elections no longer exist (SP.a-Spirit and CD&V-NVA).

The numbers are:
Vlaams Belang: coming from 12% they lose 4,3% ending up on 7,7% (Senate: -6,6% ending up on 12,3%)

LDD: coming from 4% they lose 1,7% ending up on 2,3% (Senate: -2,2% ending up on 3,3%)
OpenVLD: coming from 11,8% they lose 3,4% ending up on 8,4% (Senate: -6,8 ending up on 13,3%)
Groen: coming from 4% they add 0,2% ending up on 4,2% (Senate:+0,4% ending up on 6,3%)



The SP.a-Spirit cartel dissolved without too much trace (mostly due to the election threshold): the SP.a back on its own loses 1,3% against its cartel position of 2007 ending up on 9% in the Chamber and a loss of 0,9% in the Senate brings them to 15,3%.

The CD&V-NVA cartel split, but last elections they had 18,5% together in the Chamber and 31,4% in the Senate. The math [CD&V now: 10,9% in Chamber, 16,4% in Senate and NVA now: 17,3% in Chamber, 31,7% in Senate] ends up with a big win for the former cartel, ending in 28,2% for the Chamber and 48,1% in the Senate.

If analysis of those numbers can teach us anything, it is that the unrest in the Flemish liberal democrats, between their own left and right wing, still exists. It's a problem which has been troubling the VLD from their reform in 1992 (they used to be PVV), and has peaked in recent years with party members leaving and starting their own parties (LDD for instance). As long as they cannot make a coherent whole, they will always have big chops of swing-voters they lose when they become too leftist or too rightist... And, it's mainly due to that big chop of voters that the NVA gets its monster score.

Few symbols of Belgian unity remain, other than the royal family, the cartoon character Tintin and Brussels itself. There is a national soccer team, but it did not qualify for the World Cup.

That's a pitiful statement. All symbols of Belgium unity still exist (flag, king, hymn, and I think Jacques Brel  is a better symbol of unity in Belgium than our beloved reporter comic who has turned in a money carousel for the heirs (and not for Belgium), and, with the risk of sounding like a snarky Flemish nationalist: who's known all through the world by his French name. We have our great artists, musicians and fashion designers, all them more interested in Belgium and the big wide world than in that little, economically developed but emotionally stinted Flanders... In sports there's Cleijsters and Henin, more balanced you cannot make your representation in sports, linguistically speaking! The only thing that should change is in fact the national soccer team, since they haven't had results in ages, and the only reason we have to have a national team is because eveybody just lurves soccer.
Bah, stupid sport.

Also, his name is Bart De Wever, not Bart de Wever. In Dutch Dutch all "de" in names are "de", in Flemish Dutch, "de" in a name written without capital means nobility. And nobility he ain't. It's a small detail, but don't let all this discourse on how the Flemish are pitted against the French-speaking lead you to believe that the Flemish love the Dutch more.


BBC world:

The result would be a significant loss for Premier Yves Leterme's coalition of Christian Democrats, Liberals and Socialists.

While strictly not untrue, I'd rather see "Christian Democrats and Liberals on Flemish side, and Liberals and Socialists on French side" or some notation that actually represents an important nuance. Nearly all Belgian parties are individual entities on either side of the language barrier; while of course, let's say, the Flemish and French socialists wouldn't have a lot of problems working together, their way of doing things, of thinking, the solutions they offer... can be quite different. One of the biggest differences exist between the Flemish Christen democrats (center right) and the French (center left). Chucking them all on one heap as Christen Democrats, without taking note of the language group, is rather flighty journalism.

Belgian governments are required to be made up of a bi-lingual coalition of at least four parties.

That's the first I hear about that, though seeing how in high school history classes we managed to cover WW1&2 three years in a row and never actually got to modern day Belgium, I could be mistaken. The only coalition that needs to be formed legally is between one French-speaking and one Dutch-speaking party, so bilingual, yes. But four parties? Strictly speaking, if there would be a French-speaking party with 50,5% of the French-speaking votes, and the same on the Flemish side, those two could form a legal federal government.
However, it is true that usually a wider coalition is looked for, mainly because if you want to make constitutional changes you need a 2/3 majority in parliament, and for most important constitutional reforms also a 1/2+1 or 2/3 majority in both language groups within the federal parliament. So, it makes sense to form a 4 party coalition to make sure the changes you want to make actually will pass parliament.


De Volkskrant:

Anderen zijn hoopvoller gestemd. Zij denken dat de Franstaligen onder druk van deze uitslag bereid zullen zijn tot een staatshervorming. 

Translated: Others are more hopeful. They think the French-speaking will be pressed by this result to the reform of the state.

This is a rehash of what a lot of Flemish parties have been saying for months: we need to force the French-speaking politicians to reform, because they don't want any. It's always no no no. Now they can do naught else!

Lies, I say, lies and confuzzelation, and the media is complicit in this scam. After the previous election, during the difficult formation of the coalition, it was decided, mainly by the CD&V-NVA cartel, that as a solution of the ongoing debacle, they were going to start with coming to some agreement on the split of BHV before starting talks on the reform of the state's structures. This is problematic because to propose that  the only solution to the BHV problem is the split of the electoral district (in which the French-speaking stand to lose) is looking for difficulties. However, all other solutions would demand deeper state reform (expansions of Brussels, or making federal elections federal by dissolving the language barrier for those elections and of course the parity rule that rebalances the Walloon and Flemish vote for the Chamber), which you've just excluded from the table. That, I do not call negotiating.
Because the Walloons stand to lose by a simple split of BHV, they are not motivated to cooperate. However, this is something different than not wanting a state reform. They wanted rather a state reform that included (if it really has to, *sigh*) than a solution for BHV. They windicated often enough they would compromise on their wants and give up their stance on BHV, if for instance an expansions of Brussels could be put on the agenda. It's only logical the French-speaking parties would not formally commit to a split of BHV under those circumstances.

Hence my belief that the previous winners did not truly want to negotiate, and seeing how Bart De Wever (NVA) changed his tone towards the Walloons as soon as it became obvious that a win was a serious option in this election (also: this time, no Flemish lion flags in the NVA victory party yesterday evening!), I'm assuming he's not only showing good will, but also the will to compromise and come to a good and long-term solution for all Belgian levels. Let's just see what the next days bring...