BRUSSELS (AP) — The last time federal elections were held in Belgium in 2019, it took nearly 18 months before a new prime minister could be sworn in to lead a seven-party coalition government.
The wait was even longer after the 2010 vote when the country needed 541 days to form a government, still a world record.
Belgian voters return to the national polls on Sunday, in conjunction with the European Union vote, amid a rise of both the far-right and the far-left in the country. The vote could mean complex negotiations ahead in a country of 11.5 million people who are divided by language and deep regional identities.
Belgium is split along linguistic lines, with francophone Wallonia in the south and Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north, and governments are invariably formed by coalitions made of parties from both regions.
The latest opinion polls suggest that a new headache is on the horizon.
Two Flemish nationalist parties are poised to gather the largest shares of votes in Flanders, with the far-right Vlaams Belang, which backs independence for Flanders, is expected to win more than 25% of the vote. Just behind, the right-wing nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) could get around 20% of the vote.
In French-speaking Wallonia, the Socialist Party is projected to garner as much as a quarter of the ballots ahead of liberals and the far-left Belgium’s Workers Party. Poorer Wallonia — whose decline started in the 1960’s while Flanders’ economy went up — traditionally leans in favor of national unity because the region would likely find it difficult to survive economically on its own.
I don’t know about Belgium, but I find saying far left and far right sounds like both are equally bad, but IMO, far right is significantly worse than far left. It gets on my nerves hearing people act like they’re equally bad. They’re not.
The far left party in belgium is pro russian.
So far right are fascists, far left are tankies. Maybe one is worse than the other, but both are bad enough for that not to matter.
That sounds a lot different than what I think of as right and left then
because in america, “far left” is literal moderates and “right-wing” is pretty much facism.
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They oppose NATO membership, and are parroting the Russian talking point that the Ukraine invasion was the west’s fault.
While they might not be explicitly supporting Russia (which would be political suicide tbh), some of their talking points sure do align quite nicely with Russia.
I personally find them more dangerous than alt right at this point in time.
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It sounds like you’re looking for a hard link, like the one between the far right and china/russia. There is none, as far as I am aware.
The fact they aligned their views about NATO and the Ukraine invasion with Russia (the “NATO threatened Russia, so they had no choice” narrative you also mentioned), and their general affection towards the USSR is more what I was getting at. To me, that’s sufficient to be considered pro-russian.
As to why I called them “more dangerous” (not “worse”, I agree that the far rights ideas are considerably worse) - It’s a couple of things. I feel they are more competent in general than the right. They’re also more idealistic and consistent.
Those by themselves are not dangerous traits, but I also question how far that affection towards the USSR and China goes.
While I actually agree with much of their points, I’m just not that sure how much of the USSR/China they’d actually like to replicate. Regardless of that, I believe they would be fairly successful in implementing much of it - hence why I think they are more dangerous.
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The problem in Belgium is that the Dutch speaking part swings far-right whereas the French speaking part swings far-left. Without common ground they probably will not be able to form a government.
This is similar to to how the two major US political parties fail at effectively creating constant, essential evolution of laws in the name of representing ideals.
Candidates that can not, by the very foundational nature of their stated goals and beliefs, form coalitions with other candidates in order to ensure constant progress, create disfunctional governments that fail their citizens. Systems of choice should tend towards the choices that best represent the most widely agreed upon ideas. If those systems are in place, citizens who willingly choose extreme idelogical candidates that denounce compromise and coalitions are getting exactly what they voted for- a government that is doomed to fail.
We need moderate candidates focused on representing the majority of their constituents, and we need voting systems in place that favor moderate candidates. Any system that favors moderate candidates - say candidates that, while maybe not any majority’s first choice, but the second choice of a majority of the same people - is favorable to first-past-the-post, which has allowed exteremism and obstructionism to thrive in our legislative bodies.
The question becomes, do the citizens have that system in place, a system where moderate voices can thrive? If they do, are there those in positions of extreme wealth and power who would benefit from convincing the rest of us that voting for extreme, obstructionist candidates is best? Are those people possibly exploiting the system to create disfuntional governments that protect their wealth and power?
That’s whats happening in the US. Regulatory capture and mass media control, for example, are tools used to convince citizens the war is between us, distracting us from their benefitting from our disfunctional government. These few push the idea that obstructionism and extremism is our only choice, lest you be seen as the enemy. The true enemy is clearly those that care more about themselves and/or their espoused ideals than society at large, a society doomed without a constantly evolving goverment keeping corruption and consolodation of wealth and power in check.
