Painful Delivery of a new Dutch Government

Sunday night in Johannesburg, South Africa, one Spanish goal killed the orange coloured Dutch dreams about its Soccer World championship. Frustrating, but not really disastrous. For the Dutch found, like the French in 1998 and the Spanish today, an irrational but very real national, popular unity that includes every marginalised category in their society. This Tuesday night, a million people are expected in Amsterdam to celebrate their national team. A small half of the players are immigrants or sons of immigrants. Some of them, like Boularouch, have even roots in Islamic countries.
The orange national hysteria is a slap in the face of hate-mongerer Wilders. The message of the local, spontaneous manifestations is: "We are all together!" The institutionalised distinctions between people who have "roots" in Judeo-Christian culture and those who have not, that Wilders' PVV party wrote into its election program, are as redundant as can be, at this moment.
Like we predicted here on June 9, election eve, Wilders' party, that got 24 out of 150 seats in the Dutch Parliament, is as of now not a part of coalition negotiations for a new majority Government. The conservative liberal VVD party, who carried the elections with 31/150 seats, just before the Social-Democrats of the PvdA (30/150), could not avoid some days of negotiations with Wilders, just after the elections, with the objective of a right wing Government that needed the support of the big loser of the elections, the Christian-Democrats of the CDA (22/150). Such a combination would have controlled 76 out of 150 seats in the Lower House, but only a minority in the Upper House.
 Even while the fundamentalist protestant SGP party (2/150) offered it's support for such a combination, the new CDA leader, foreign minister Maxime Verhagen (who stands in for long-time MP Balkenende, who dismissed after his defeat), made an unheard-of move when asked to join the negotiations with VVD and PVV. First, he uninvited himself, saying that he preferred to wait for an eventual compromise between VVD and PVV. Then, provoked in a parliamentary debate, he stated clearly, that, in his opinion, a number of core ideas of Wilders were not compatible with the Dutch constitution and the rule of Law.
Verhagen mentioned specifically Wilders' idea of "war against Islam" as "the center of Dutch foreign policy", Wilders' 'kopvoddentax" idea (= making pay a tax by Islamic women who cover their heads) and their propositions for "ethnic registration" of all Dutch citizens.
Wilders, as is his way, avoided a direct debate about those points in Parliament and started "demonizing" the CDA leader, saying that he was playing into the hands of the "treacherous left". Even when VVD-leader Mark Rutte invited Wilders to start direct negotiations with him, Wilders said "no". Thus showing, that he is not really wishing to participate as a minority party in a Government, even if it is right-wing.
A quick and efficient reaction followed from the queen and her main adviser, Mr. Tjeenk Willink. The latter, as "informateur", analysed the situation and convinced everybody but Wilders, that the conservatives had to negotiate with the PvdA and its left-liberal allies of D66 and the Greens. Wilders was furious and demanded that Tjeenk be sent away.
But he was royally ignored and since last week, a VVD-PvdA dual team of "informateurs" is chairing daily meetings of VVD, PvdA and the two smaller parties.
To me, it is unclear, if these negotiations will succeed. An alternative, more centrist, VVD-PvdA-CDA, is explicitly NOT excluded.
Anyhow: Wilders is far from his announced role as PM or vice-PM. Maybe, Wilders has never seriously considered being part of a government at this point of time. Maybe, he is really disappointed. Difficult to know.
At this moment, Wilders is playing the card of "being excluded" by the traditional political caste. He may convince many people with that Calimero tactic. But I see also signs, that people are beginning to get tired of those histrionics. A majority of the Dutch support the effort the make a VVD-PvdA-coalition (Blue-Red-Plus).
Wilders'victory at the elections that got him 23 co-parliamentarians, might also prove a disaster in disguise. At best, his new colleagues are former parliamentary assistants, who never had to fight for a mandate, but who know the parliamentary dealings and wheelings. Most of them, however, are political nitwits, who range from Israeli agents and lobbyists, to religious fanatics of the "rapture" kind.
This whole situation could have been avoided, if more parliamentarians than the D66 and GroenLinks ones, would have spoken out more clearly from the beginning. Many democrats have been (and are still) intimidated by the Wilders speak. They feel (unjustly) responsible for the islamist threats against Wilders. As many among them have no real connections to the people, they tend to believe, that Joe and Johanna are really daily afraid of the Muslims.
It is no wonder, that, in a developed and civilized state as Holland is, the failure of politics is beginning to be compensated by the intervention of Justice (the hate-mongering procedure against Wilders in Amsterdam) and by the highest state councils (Raad Van State President -after the Queen- Tjeenk Willink). But, this odd country has also a very developed civil society. The Dutch are used to mend their own affairs. From ancient times on. Polders were managed by their inhabitants. Church consistories in the same way. Urban neighbourhoods with socio-economic difficulties develop their own solutions.
In the long run, I am sure, nobody will need Wilders' "Israeli" fantasies any more...
Least of all, Israel itself!

Belgium Upside Down

In surrealist-minded Belgium, a stupid error may easily turn into a wise comment.
French TF1 Television channel was going to inform their public, yesterday night, about the actual political turmoil in the neighbouring country. A map was needed, to indicate where Belgium is, and how it is divided in three regions.
Here is the map. Please, find the TWO biggest errors:

You saw it!
The French speaking Walloons are living in the Southern part of Belgium and the Dutch speaking Flanders people live in the North. That is the first error. The second one is less evident for everybody who is not Belgian. The third Belgian region is the Brussels agglomeration. It lies just some Kilometers north of Wallonia and not in the middle of Flanders. An informed French blogger jubilated ironically: ‘This is a final solution to the Belgian mess! French speaking Brussels in the middle of Wallonia, in stead of being surrounded by frustrated Flemish.’ Only the mutual ethnic cleaning between North and South, would be somewhat onerous…
Why is that turning upside-down of the Belgian crisis so funny?
You should know, that the division of the country into regions is language-based. Dutch-speaking Belgians were overlorded by French-speaking elites since Belgian independence (1830, from Holland). A cultural, regional and political upsurge of the Flemish since the end of the 19th century, forced the Brussels and Walloon bourgeois to accept equality of the two main national languages first, and subsequently a series of state-reforms that leaves Belgium as it is now: a country governed by the two main (linguistic) regions, each jealously guarding its prerogatives. Even international trading has become a regional matter!
(Imagine the Chinese, receiving a Belgian economic mission, that is split up between Flemish, Walloons and representatives of the separate Brussels region! This really happened a few years ago. I’m told, that the Chinese are still laughing…)
Most problems about frontiers are about asymmetry. In Belgium, we have an asymmetry between language and soil. If you divide a country along linguistic lines, you have to take into account, that there are areas of mixed language that do not fit into your scheme.
This is, where the capital, Brussels comes in.
Brussels
A long time ago, Brussels was a Flemish city. We are speaking about the early Middle Ages. Then the Bourguignons came in and attached the whole of the Low Countries (the actual Benelux) to their powerful French duchy. Court- and bureaucratic language became French, the Church turned French. Later on, the Spanish Habsburgs were masters of the country, speaking French. Next (beginning 18th century) came the Austrian Habsburgs, guarding the country against the Dutch, the French and the English and fighting many wars on its soil. The last 18th century war, the one against the French Revolution, they lost. The French sansculottes occupied Belgium and Brussels. Napoleon I even made Belgium part of the French ‘nation’, splitting it up into French Départements. The Vienna arrangements of 1815 gave the Austrian Low countries to the new Dutch king. William I did not bother much about language. His latest spouse was a member of the French speaking Belgian nobility. The Belgian revolution of 1830 was made in Brussels by the new higher middle class of traders and industrialists, closely tied to mighty Great-Britain.
That is why the city (or: region) of Brussels became, in majority, a French speaking city. It has in some neighbourhoods still authentically Flemish speaking citizens and in some places, people mix up both languages in a creative potpourri.  There are no Flemish or French neighbourhoods, anybody can live everywhere. So, Brussels could not fit into the linguistic definitions of the ‘State-Reforms’. And it would not, either, for it has a mission of being a capital, as well for the 60% Flemish majority, as for the 40% French speaking minority in Belgium.
If you consider Brussels as an exception, you have to allow that it is a BIG exception. Brussels bilingual region has 1,2 million inhabitants. Greater Brussels (the agglomeration and surroundings) can claim 2 millions out of a total of 11 million Belgians.
The frontiers between the linguistic regions have been fixed in 1962. After half a century, you may assume, that there have been some changes to the linguistical composition of some areas next to the “frontiers”. This is of course more than true for the growing Brussels agglomeration. To cut it short: Some rural communities around Brussels receive an influx of French-speaking inhabitants, and, as the EU develops, also of many Eurocrats, who do not speak French, maybe, but certainly not Dutch, in most cases.
As an immigrant into Brussels since twenty years, I admire the loose way in which common citizens in the city as well as in the rural communities around it, cope with the linguistical problems in day-to-day life. “Les Belges se débrouillent” - the Belgians find a way out. That is the result of many centuries of foreign occupation, I think. The Belgians let their politicians do and find their own solutions among themselves. In that respect, I see no distinction between Walloons, Flemish or ‘Brusseleers’.
The aloofness of my new compatriots has its merits. But it is also responsible for a surrealistically complicated government, that is the playing ground of regional politicians who are unable to swallow the compromises that inevitably have to be made for the survival of the Belgian contraption.
As I told on several occasions before this, the irresponsible politics of Flemish separatists and Walloon regionalists, are suffocating the city of Brussels, which, on its own, provides 20% of the economic strength of the country. The last citizens rebellion of Brussels (against the Burgundian aristocracy) dates from the 1511 carnival. Will 2011 see a repeat of it?
I must confess: I hope so!