We overwegen binnenkort een Engelstalige uitgave van Angeltjes te maken. Uiteraard zouden wij, als de Vlaams-nationalisten die we zijn, alles in de eigen taal willen brengen of zoals een overtuigd familielid het steeds zegt "Heel de wereld Vlaams". Soms zijn we verplicht intressante artikels uit het buitenland over het doodzieke land B in oorspronkelijke versie te brengen, omdat het niet materieel te doen is deze te vertalen. Het is trouwens ook uniek, bij ons weten, dat er zo druk geschreven wordt over wat hier aan de gang is. Bovendien blijken de verslaggevers (ook als ze vanuit Namen rapporteren) veel minder dan vroeger geneiegd zich tevreden te stellen met de officiële standpunten van het regime.
Calls for a breakup grow louder in Belgium
Published: September 20, 2007
En hier stond de grote foto van de overhandiging van de taart door Annemans en Dewinter een De Crem ! Afgrijselijk ....wat moeten de mensen in Groot-Brittannië wel niet denken ?
BRUSSELS: Belgium has given the world Audrey Hepburn, René Magritte, the saxophone and deep-fried potato slices that somehow are called French.
But the back story of this flat country of 10.4 million is of a bad marriage writ large - two nationalities living together that cannot stand each other. Now, more than three months after a general election, Belgium has failed to create a government, producing a crisis so profound that it has led to a flood of warnings, predictions, even promises that the country is about to disappear.
"We are two different nations, an artificial state created as a buffer between big powers, and we have nothing in common except a king, chocolate and beer," said Filip Dewinter, the leader of Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Bloc, the extreme-right, xenophobic Flemish party, in an interview. "It's 'bye-bye Belgium' time."
Radical Flemish separatists like Dewinter want to slice the country horizontally along ethnic and economic lines: to the north, their beloved Flanders - where Dutch (known locally as Flemish) is spoken and money is increasingly made - and to the south, Francophone Wallonia where a kind of provincial snobbery was once polished to a fine sheen and where today old factories dominate the gray landscape.
"There are two extremes, some screaming that Belgium will last forever and others saying that we are standing at the edge of a ravine," said Caroline Sägesser, a Belgian political analyst at Crisp, a socio-political research organization in Brussels. "I don't believe Belgium is about to split up right now. But in my lifetime? I'd be surprised if I were to die in Belgium."
Since the kingdom of Belgium was created as an obstacle to French expansionism in 1830, it has struggled for cohesion. Anyone who has spoken French in a Flemish city quickly gets a sense of the mutual hostility that is a part of daily life here. The current crisis dates to June 10, when the Flemish Christian Democrats, who demand greater autonomy for Flanders, came in first with one-fifth of the seats in Parliament.
Yves Leterme, the party leader, would have become prime minister if he had been able to put together a coalition government.
But he was rejected by French speakers, because of his contempt for them - an oddity since his own father was a French speaker. He further alienated them - and even some moderate Flemish leaders - on Belgium's national holiday in July, when he appeared unable to sing Belgium's national anthem.
Belgium's mild-mannered, 73-year-old king, Albert II, has struggled to mediate, even though under the Constitution he has no power other than to appoint ministers and rubber-stamp laws passed by Parliament. He has welcomed a parade of politicians and elder statesmen to the palace in Brussels, successively appointing four political leaders to resolve the crisis. All have failed.
On one level, there is normalcy and calm here. The country is governed largely by a patchwork of regional bureaucracies, so trains run on time, mail is delivered, garbage is collected, the police keep order.
Officials from the former government - including former Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who is ethnically Flemish - report for work and collect salaries. The former government is allowed to pay bills, implement previously-decided polices and make urgent decisions on peace and security.
But a new government will be needed to approve a budget for next year.
With the headquarters of both NATO and the European Union in Brussels, the crisis is not limited to this country because it could embolden other European separatist movements, from the Basques and the Lombards to the Catalans.
Certainly, there are reasons why Belgium is likely to stay together, at least in the short term.
Brussels, the country's overwhelmingly Francophone capital, but located in Flanders, historically was a Flemish-speaking city. There would be overwhelming local and international resistance to turning Brussels into the capital of a country called Flanders.
The economies of the two regions are inextricably intertwined, and separation would be a fiscal nightmare.
Then there is the issue of the national debt - 90 percent of the Belgian gross domestic product - and how to equitably divide it.
But there is deep resentment in Flanders that its much-healthier economy must subsidize the Francophone south, where unemployment is double that of the north.
[A poll by the private Field Research Institute made public Tuesday indicated that 66 percent of the inhabitants of Flanders believed that the country would split up "sooner or later," and 46 percent favor such a division. The telephone poll interviewed 1,000 people.]
French speakers, meanwhile, favor the status quo. "Ladies and gentlemen, everything's fine!" exclaimed Mayor Jacques Etienne of Namur, the Walloon capital, at the annual Walloon festival last Saturday.
Acknowledging that talk of a "divorce" had returned, he reminded the audience that this was a day to celebrate, saying, "We have to, if possible, forget about our personal worries and the anxieties of our time."
Belgium has suffered through previous political crises and threats of partition. But a number of political analysts say that this one is different.
The turning point is widely believed to have been last December when RTBF, a Francophone public television channel, broadcast a hoax on the break-up of Belgium.
The two-hour live television report showed images of cheering, flag-waving Flemish nationalists and crowds of French-speaking Walloons preparing to leave, while also reporting that the king had fled the country.
Panicked viewers called the station, and the prime minister's office condemned the program as irresponsible and tasteless. But for the first time, in the public imagination, the possibility of a breakup seemed real.
Contributing to the difficulty in forming a new government now is the fact that all eleven parties in the national Parliament are local, not national parties. The country has eight regional or language-based Parliaments.
Oddly, there is no panic just now, just exasperation and a hint of embarrassment. "We must not worry too much," said Baudouin Bruggeman, a 55-year-old schoolteacher as he sipped on champagne at the festival in Namur. "Belgium has survived on compromise since 1830. Everyone puffs himself up in this banana republic. You have to remember that this is Magritte country, the country of surrealism. Anything can happen."
Maia de la Baume contributed reporting from Namur.
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