the Belgium Goverment has fallen!

SupaCat · Post by **SupaCat** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:41 am

It finally happened, the goverment of Belgium has fallen. Why? You see, Belgium is a country with 2 main languages (actually 3, that being german). The flemish side wanted to rework the goverment, the wallon side didn't.

Yeah okay, the goverment sucked. I mean, it took more almost a year for it to be formed, and since that time nothing has been accomplisched really, because our prime minister is a complete idiot who doesn't see the real issue. He recently suggested to appoint trains to the regions (not sure if that sounds right). You know how big our regions are? I think that i can see the end of mine from my window!!!

Our goverment, mostly excisting out of christian democratics, wanted to send our troops to Iraq. In other news, our soldiers don't have enough ammo to practice their weapon skills and our tanks don't use the shells normally used by European forces.

Anyhow, the real problem is that, if there would be re-elections, there is a great chance that the nationalistic party, Vlaams Belang, would come to power, which means that Belgium would be destroyed, as a monarch and as country. Another problem is that, if vlaams belang would come to power, Flanders ,as the country would then be named, would fall into a deep depression. Why? This party has no answers!!! They see ONLY problems, never sollutions... Oh no wait, they do have a sollution, namely: it's all the foreigners fault

. Seriously though, not many people know this, but most of Flanders economy depends on that of Wallish (?don't know how it's actually written). And did you know our country has only 10.000.000 citizens and that New York is self is alot bigger than our little, political messed up country.

All of this, just to say that you guys in America don't have that bad there. (only on the politcal area though

)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7507506.stm

prof. Moriarty · Post by **prof. Moriarty** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 1:10 am

May God take pity on your poor country.

M

fable · Post by **fable** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:03 am

SupaCat wrote:All of this, just to say that you guys in America don't have that bad there. (only on the politcal area though )

Oh, but we do have it bad. Our government in over 200 years has never fallen.

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:14 am

Give it some time Fable. Four years, tops.

fable · Post by **fable** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 5:01 pm

Tricky wrote:Give it some time Fable. Four years, tops.

If it hasn't fallen under Mr. All-But-Martial-Law Bush, it isn't going to. Sad to say, because I think every government should have a crisis that forces its people to look at themselves and rewrite their constitution. Perhaps once every 50 years.

Maharlika · Post by **Maharlika** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 5:23 pm

Back then in my country's Commonwealth years during and before he became head of state (we were "unofficially" under the U.S. then), President Manuel Quezon once said:

It's better to have a government run like hell by Filipinos than to have one run smoothly by Americans.

I guess he got what he wanted.

You Belgians are still lucky.

edit - Doesn't mean tho that under American rule would make things better.

VonDondu · Post by **VonDondu** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 9:14 pm

SupaCat wrote:All of this, just to say that you guys in America don't have that bad there.

Considering the fact that a Belgium company just bought Budweiser, "the national beer of America", you're only saying that to taunt us, aren't you?

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 12:45 am

fable wrote:If it hasn't fallen under Mr. All-But-Martial-Law Bush, it isn't going to.

Well I don't know. The fake president guy left quite a mess, and some of it is just getting worse. More Katrina's. Lower dollar value. No oil. More war. McCain (if he wore an eye patch he'd look just like Michael Hogan from Battlestar Gallactica) or Obama can only do so much to fix things up. And the populous is just getting angrier. That isn't a line that can be followed up forever.

SupaCat · Post by **SupaCat** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 3:42 pm

VonDondu wrote:Considering the fact that a Belgium company just bought Budweiser, "the national beer of America", you're only saying that to taunt us, aren't you?

There's an old saying about american beer, and australian for that matter.
'American beer is like making love in a canoe, awful close to water'

BTW: I thought that Budweiser was a German beer.

fable · Post by **fable** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 6:40 pm

SupaCat wrote:There's an old saying about american beer, and australian for that matter.
'American beer is like making love in a canoe, awful close to water'

I've heard another word used rather than "awful," but for the sake of the many three-year-olds who read this board, we'll leave it out.

BTW: I thought that Budweiser was a German beer.

A very poor beer that most Americans don't like, but drink in bars because micro brews aren't yet generally available.

Claudius · Post by **Claudius** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 7:12 pm

American micro and craft brewed beers is some of the best brewed in the world. Try: Dogfish head, New Belgium, Rogue, Anchor Steam (old school), Bells, and many more. Just in my state of Michigan I can name 8 microbrews all with distinct styles of beer: atwater block, bells, founders, New Holland, Arcadia, Michigan Brewing Company, dark horse, and Arbor.

I've drank beer in germany belgium and drank imports to compare.

http://www.beerhunter.com/documents/19133-001608.html

prof. Moriarty · Post by **prof. Moriarty** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 1:06 am

I'd love to continue this discussion, should we make a new thread about good and awful beers?

God wills it!
prof.

GawainBS · Post by **GawainBS** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 12:01 pm

Well, a few days after Supacat's post, it appears our governement hasn't fallen apparently. Allow me to explain: for a governement to fall here, the prime minister has to offer his resignation to the king, who can accept or reject it. This time, it got rejected, because we deperately NEED a governement, if only for socio-economic matters to get settled. (Not that they were doing a great job of that.)
Another issue is that, even with new elections, there wouldn't be any real difference in the outcome, it would only polarise further and the elections wouldn't be legal. Our Constitutional Court (might be a bad translation) has ruled that the previous election was the last one that could be held without the solving of the problem "BHV". What this problem entails, I'll explain later, since it would take a lot of time, and I smell dinner's ready. So stay tuned for another dull, yet surprisingly complicated issue of "Belgian Politics"!

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 7:34 pm

Maybe you could send your prime minister over here, to the US, and we'll send you Dubya, in turn? Then your prime minister could step down, and our government would collapse. And your government could simply listen to Dubya for a few minutes and, you know, collapse. It's worth a shot.

GawainBS · Post by **GawainBS** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 2:01 am

fable wrote:Maybe you could send your prime minister over here, to the US, and we'll send you Dubya, in turn? Then your prime minister could step down, and our government would collapse. And your government could simply listen to Dubya for a few minutes and, you know, collapse. It's worth a shot.

The problem is, we're so tired of not having a governement, that we won't let it collapse. If you only proposed a year earlier...

Well, to further elaborate... To understand "BHV", you have to know how are country is organised. It's divided in Regions (Geographically): Flanders, Brussels, and Walloon. Each has its own governement. Also, we're divided in Communities (Based on language): Flemish Community, French-speaking Community, and German-speaking Community. Each has its own governement, allthough for Flanders, the Region and Community governement are the same. This can't be case for the others, because the Germanspeakers are situated in Walloon, while 80% of Brussels is Frenchspeaking and 20% Flemish.To get it easier, a certain zone past each border offers "facilities" to people of the neighbouring language.
Completely indepent of this, the country is also divided in 10 Provinces, each with its own staff. (Luckily, not a governement.)
Still with me? Good.

Now, when we had elections, our country's voting presincts were equated with the Provinces. This was later changed to a smaller denomination, called "arrondissement", which is just a collection of several adjacent cities. One of those was Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde, BHV. This implied that for stricly local elections (City/Town-level), Frenchspeaking-parties (from Brussels) could be voted for from Halle & Vilvoorde, which are Flemish cities. However, a lot of the EU-workers live there, and since they can vote in local elections, they vote for those Frenchspeaking parties, who use that fact to "Frenchize" the towns, sometimes going so far as to ignore the rights of the Flemish there.
Our Constitutional Court decreed that this was illegal, hence the need to solve this before the next elections, since they won't be legal otherwise. However, we DO need a full-fledged governement to get this done. Since our federal governement (Yes, we still had one up our sleeve) consists of both Flemish and Frenchspeaking parties, we need to get to a consensus.
Apart from that, we need also need other State-reforms, to give more power to the Regions, since their needs are wildly diverging. One example: Flanders' unemployed are aged mainly 55+, while in Walloon, there are a lot more unemployed, and they are very young, around early 20. Obviously, you need a very different economic approach to settle these situations.
Anyway, that's it for today. Maybe tomorrow I'll try to explain how comes that our current prime ministers is making such a mess of this. (Not that he alone is to blame...)

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 2:43 am

fable wrote:Then your prime minister could step down, and our government would collapse. And your government could simply listen to Dubya for a few minutes and, you know, collapse. It's worth a shot.

Or.. we could just build a giant spaceship, evacuate all the people and live among the stars.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 8:05 am

Tricky wrote:Or.. we could just build a giant spaceship, evacuate all the people and live among the stars.

LOL! Everytime I read some wanker going on in this vein I just curse about things they probably do with goats, and close the tab.

Well, to further elaborate... To understand "BHV", you have to know how are country is organised. It's divided in Regions (Geographically): Flanders, Brussels, and Walloon...

Good exposition. As it happens, I did know most (but not all) of it, because I'd seriously considered moving to Belgium in the 1970s. Had a friend with connections to a fledging radio station over there, that needed a program director. I decided against it ultimately, but did some research at the time. If my wife and I were 30 years younger now, I strongly suspect we would move to Belgium, despite the issues you've got. They are as nothing in my opinion compared to the fundamental legal and structural problems here in the US that underlie everything, and remain unacknowledged. No place is perfect, but it would probably take cutting up the US into 30 or more separate nations and putting half the population into therapy for years before this land and its inhabitants made any sense.

GawainBS · Post by **GawainBS** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 5:39 am

Thanks, it was quite an effort to get to understand it myself, let alone someone else who isn't raised here.

I think most Belgians are happy with the system on its own, but not always with the (clumsy) way it's been used. And the two "people" (Flemish and Walloons) in our country don't even have an issue with each other. I know from personal experience that they do their best to speak Dutch (the language of the Flemish) while the Flemish do their best to speak French (the language of the Walloons.) The main problem is the elite, better-than-you attitude of the Frenchspeakers in the capital.
I wholeheartily agree that it's probably a much more enjoyable system than the American one, mainly on the context of social security.

The last part that needs explaining is why exactly it's so hard to get to a consensus now. Our previous governement was Liberal-Social and also the Green party, IIRC. For those who aren't so well-versed in European politics as fable, Liberal is grosso modo the equivalent of American Democratic, while Social Parties would probably be deemed communists and burned on the stake in the US in the '50s.

Green parties are of course the Environmental-awareness groups.
In the opposition, we had our hardline, frothing, extremist party of Vlaams Belang (Xenophobe, Nationalistic, "Old Values", etc.), for the first time since long the Christian-Democrats , NV-A (Flemish Nationalists, not so rabiat as Belang), and some other minor parties.
Just as a reminder, we had both a Flemish and French-speaking Liberal Party, Social Party, Green, and Christian-Democrats.
So, in the prelude to the election, the Christian-Democrats' topman, our current Prime-Minister, was wieldling a propaganda that had nothing to do with contents, but everything with rethoric. He was going to offer "Good policiy". (He never explained what that entailed, he just mentioned it.) He was always going on about "Who still believe these people?" (Referring to the current governement.)
Apart from that, he made an alliance with the NV-A, to draft support from the Flemish-minded people and he started a brash rethoric against the Frenchspeakers and Walloons (Which are not always the same, remember above

), while promising a gigantic state-reform. Furthermore, he started hacking in on the Liberals.
Now, on election day, he got 800 000 votes, which is nearly 10% of all Belgians. However, the Social Parties (both the Flemish and Walloon) had an enormous backlash, while the Liberal parties did relatively well. Our prime minister had counted on the opposite. So now he is forced to negotiate with the Liberals to get a majority, and convince the Frenchspeakers/Walloons to agree to a state-reform. As a side note, the Liberals from Walloon had an alliance with the FDF, a radical Flemish-hating, Frenchspeaking, party.
So, after more than a year, we still have no working governement, and the few things they did manage to do, aren't worth anything. They're so proud to have a budget with some left overs, but they used an inflation of 3% and an oil price of 110$. Last week, it already was 5% and 147$...

SupaCat · Post by **SupaCat** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 7:45 am

GawainBS wrote:T
I think most Belgians are happy with the system on its own, but not always with the (clumsy) way it's been used. And the two "people" (Flemish and Walloons) in our country don't even have an issue with each other. I know from personal experience that they do their best to speak Dutch (the language of the Flemish) while the Flemish do their best to speak French (the language of the Walloons.) The main problem is the elite, better-than-you attitude of the Frenchspeakers in the capital.

I don't really think the main problem is the better-than-you attitude. I believe it's the propaganda of Vlaams Belang that's turning people against the Walloons. They do this by so called "facts" that with better observation aren't true.
The propaganda is mostly based on the proud Flamish Power and the incompetent Walloons. A few examples: one from WO 1, the myth that hundreds of Flamish died because of the Walloon Officers who refused to speak Flamish (speaking French was only for the high classed and back then the Walloons were the elite). This is untrue and there are enough diaries of that time that NEVER adressed a problem like that, and you would expect that it would be mentioned. An example for this time... The among many accepted fact that Walloon is a dump hole and that without it Flanders would be one of the most well faring countries in the world. They forget to mention that the Walloon use the port of Antwerp (which is in Flanders), while they could use a cheaper, more close to home port. IF the walloons wouldn't use the port of Antwerp (and this has been proved by many high standing professors ) the area would soon fall down to a less well-faring status and this would also show in the rest of Flanders.
There are many, many things like this that are being widly accepted by Flemish families, and they're all proud they're Flamish, all because of the wrong reasons (one of these is that we one time one from the French in the Middle ages, what's not mentioned is that we were later defeated again and again by those same french)

And of the Prime Minister... The man didn't even know our national anthem

That he complained about the previous goverment I don't even mind, all politicians to that, however all those other politicians atleast did something in their time they were in the goverment, and like GawainBS said, this one has done NOTHING of importance. Meanwhile lots of investers go away from our country, because, well who want to invest in a country that isn't stable?

GawainBS · Post by **GawainBS** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 8:01 am

The VB propaganda certainly plays a significant role, but they aren't the only ones who are taking the contradiction Flanders >< Walloon way out of proportion. (Please, note that I'm not defending VB at any point here.)
However, we can't deny that our country needs a structural change to keep being able to deal with the present problems. We shouldn't be blind to the fact that there are differences between the parts of the country, but simply
"dumping" Walloon wouldn't solve the problem. (Like Supacat said, the example of the port of Antwerp is an excellent one. There's also the matter of Brussels. Technically, it would be Flemish, but since 80% of the Brusselians are Frenchspeaking [Those are the ones with the stuck-up attitude.*] and they would rather join Walloon. Further, what would remain of Flemish economy if it lost its connection to Brussels? Not much.)

*I know, this is generalisation, but for the purpose of this, it can stand.