Saturday, January 29, 2011

C'est quoi, la Belgique?

If Belgium were a website: http://belgiq.eu/ : already 230 days without a government. Are we heading for the world record?
[source]


Picture taken from Fritkot Max through LoLo's Site.





Agreed, Belgian politics are a farce at the moment. Imagine by the way that I returned to my country in June 2010 for the elections, only to notice that I had lost my civil rights by an administrative error (and therefore was not allowed to vote). The administrative error is now luckily corrected and live can go on again.

But ok: Belgian politics are a farce at the moment. For those who can't follow anymore (and who can nowadays), there is an extensive "who's who" at the website called "Who's Ho".

Today we are already 230 days without a government, which means that we are only 59 days away of the world record. [source]
Current world record holder is Iraq that needed 289 days to form a government after the war.


And in other news: potato chips are healthier than crisps.




edit: I just found out about the article "The trouble with Flanders" in the Economist. I am still reading it as we sp... errr write, but the subtitle "Why Belgium’s unending linguistic disputes matter to Europe" already gets on my nerves. People that don't understand Belgian politics always refer to our problems as a "linguistic dispute". It is not about linguistics. I am Flemish (but Belgian first!) and I don't care wether my fellow country men speak French, German or any other language at all.
Our political dead lock is about the division of federal funds and that is a regional dispute. It has nothing to do with language.
But ok: I am still reading the article, I might comment on it later.

edit 2:  done

edit 3: We made it, we beat the world record and still don't have a government, go Belgium!

The press:

3 comments:

  1. 365 days without a full government (BBC): "three more months might be needed to form a governing coalition" [...] "But our economic fundamentals our healthy and the federal government is doing what it should be doing,"

    ReplyDelete
  2. The virtual Camping 16 is now really camping in Brussels, demanding a government or a refund. (VRT article in Dutch)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Zaterdag 7 mei 2011: massapicknick in het park van Koekelberg.

    ReplyDelete

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