Belgium has been without an official government at the federal level since June 2010. In doing so, the country is breaking records as the democracy for the longest time ever without an actual government.
And as of today that record keeps running and being broken.
According to an online article today from the UK's Telegraph correspondent in Brussels, "Belgium has been without an elected government for over a year after deep divisions between Flemish and Walloon, French speaking, political parties have led to history's longest political impasse in a democracy. Elections last June deepened the crisis after a majority of voters in Flanders, the richer Dutch-speaking north of Belgium, supported the separatist New Flemish Alliance (NVA), which supports the break-up of the Belgian state. Negotiations to form a new Belgian government have dragged on for over a year as Belgium's francophone Walloon minority have refused to give Flemish separatists new powers to control taxes and to run its own economy."
Yesterday was also the day when the Dutch-speaking Flemish majority celebrate what some Flemish politicians call the "Flemish national day", much to the chagrin and outright umbrage of the French-speaking Walloons.
The latest effort to broker an agreement between the discordant linguistic factions collapsed this past Friday, as the mediator asked King Albert II to be relieved of the duty. That's a full 13 months after the contentious federal elections were held in the beleaguered country.
The country is not without other problems: financially it's in a mess. Yet another victim of the ongoing saga that is the eurozone crisis, Belgium currently has a public debt burden of about 96% of GDP. That's pretty damn close to the enormous public debt burdens that have plagued countries like Greece and Italy. Yet, much to its credit, it somehow continues to have one of the highest standards of living in the world.
What I also admire is the sheer irreverence with which many Belgians seem to be taking their political debacle, which is making them record breakers for a deadlock many other countries would find mortifying in the extreme. It must have something to do with the inimitable and uniquely Belgian spirit, as stated in an online article from the China Post back in February: "Beyond optimism, Belgians have also made it a moral duty to make fun of themselves." “We never take ourselves seriously. We are the country of the Smurfs, of Tintin, of Rene Magritte and surrealism. So it is a country that, compared with England or France, we dare to make fun of ourselves [my emphasis],” said Brussels politician Luckas Vander Taelen.
That's my kind of country and exactly what politics deserves in this day and age, to be perfectly honest.
I'm sure many Belgians are sick and tired by now of the ongoing impasse, and the divisions in the country go back many years. But I do still get a kick out of all of this
Very tellingly, the country ticks along, even as it fails to have a proper central government in place.
Interesting that, is it not? Hmmmmmmm...
Do you get my point?
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