No government, great country

Picture by Bert Van den Broucke / © Photo News

Not a lot was changing in Belgian politics over the last few months. Markets got a bit nervous, but then rediscovered the good economic fundamentals and slowed down. People didn't care. And politicians were driving in circles, meeting the same obstacles over and over again. 'L'enfer c'est la répétition'.

This weekend however, something changed. Some 35.000 (according to the police) to 45.000 (according to the organizers) people joined a manifestation in Brussels to ask for a government. The message was clear and simple: we're fed up with this. No political party or union organized the manifestation. A number of students of the Free Brussels University (VUB) did. They gave the manifestation the name 'SHAME - No government, great country'.

There are other signals people are fed up with the political crisis. Twenty captains of industry wrote a letter to the prime minister. The French speaking actor Benoit Poelvoorde asked Belgians to let their beard grow untill there is a government. Last Friday, Belgian artists gave a concert 'not in our name' in the KVS in Brussels, opposing dogmatic nationalism.

I think last Sunday's manifestation  - amplified by the other initiatives - can change something. Politicians are scared to make a compromise, scared of giving in on what they stand for. N-VA-president Bart De Wever described this feeling in his interview with Der Spiegel a month ago: 'If I join a government, I lose the next elections.'

The message of this Sunday is: yes, of course you can lose an election if you sell out what you stand for. But you can also lose elections it if you don't do what you were elected for in the first place: governing the country. 

Bart Haeck