With the European elections shaking up the political table of the European Union (EU), the results of the Belgian federal and territorial elections were destined to go unnoticed. Until the Belgian Prime Minister, the Flemish liberal Alexander De Croo, announced that he will resign this Monday … due to the poor results achieved by their training. «This is an extremely difficult night for us. “We have lost these elections,” he said and admitted his full responsibility. The Flemish far-right formations NVA and Vlaams Belang achieved the majority of the votes, while De Croo’s party barely obtained 6.8% of the votes.
«Starting tomorrow I will resign from my position as prime minister. But the liberals are strong, we will return,” De Croo promised, visibly moved. His government – supported by seven coalition parties – will remain in office until the next Belgian Executive is formed, a process that could take a long time due to the political fragmentation of the country.
Belgium has on several occasions broken the record of the country that has taken the longest to form a Government, due to the division of the regions of Wallonia and Flanders. And the rise of the Flemish extreme right with the NVA, which has obtained 22.5% of the votes, and the Vlaam Belang, which has obtained 17.8% of the ballots, further complicates this political puzzle. The rise of these two parties makes it difficult to maintain the cordon sanitaire that until now had been formed against the extreme right in the country.
In the previous elections, the NVA was also the most voted formation, but the ‘Vivaldi’ coalition of seven parties put a stop to it. In a debate prior to the elections, De Croo opened the door to bypassing the cordon sanitaire and making an agreement with the NVA, as long as it renounced the independence of the region of Flanders, one of his electoral promises. His voters, however, were very divided over whether or not to make an agreement with the extreme right. And it may have been this gesture that took its toll on De Croo in the elections.
#Argentina
