In the bars and boutiques around the splendidly Gothic Grand Place in Brussels, tourists and locals can savor beer, chips and chocolate. They can also enjoy waffles, another Belgian staple, and one that is aptly suited to the current national condition. Thanks to epic political waffling, Belgium has today been without a government for a year.
A caretaker government has run the country since elections on June 13 last year, but despite countless negotiations among the fragmented political parties, the country’s leaders are not even close to an agreement on a new coalition.
The deadlock reflects a widening split between French and Dutch-speaking communities which rarely intermingle and increasingly refuse to learn each other’s language. In last year’s elections, the biggest proportion of votes — about 17 percent — went to the N-VA, a Flemish nationalist party founded only 10 years ago that wants independence for Flanders.
Language bickering infects almost every political issue, to the extent that Belgians cannot even agree on what music to play in the Brussels metro. Last month, complaints about an apparent bias toward Jacques Brel and other French-language singers forced the public transport authority to restrict its playlist to English, Spanish and Italian songs.
Some say Belgium’s 180-year history, as a shotgun alliance of French and Dutch speakers, means the country lacks a sense of national purpose to push people together during a crisis.
“We have an awkward democracy, which is quite conflict prone,” said Carl Devos, professor of political science at Ghent University. “If you don’t have a national identity, everything is defined as them and us. Belgian problems don’t exist: It’s only French and Flemish problems.”
Yet for most Belgians these tiffs matter little. Thanks to a well-functioning bureaucracy, rubbish is collected, buses run on time and taxes still have to be paid.
At the federal level, the caretaker administration of outgoing Belgain Prime Minister Yves Leterme has kept things ticking over. It deftly helmed Belgium’s six-month presidency of the EU last year, pushed through bold budget-cutting measures in February and also dispatched fighter jets to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya.
The scant impact of the stalemate on daily life is probably why most Belgians shrug it off, even making light of it at times.
When Belgium broke the world record for its government impasse, beating Iraq’s 2009 marker as undisputed dithering champion, it was greeted with ironic celebrations across the country.
There will probably be a few more mocking celebrations today. It may well be another year before the crisis is resolved, but if Belgians continue to laugh at their bizarre condition, it probably means there is hope yet.
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