[svandamme]

small explanation as to why Belgium has trouble forming governents.

The beef is with our 2 sides of the country..


One side speaks French, and has a more French attitude to life, eg, more relaxed..
The other side speaks Flemish/Dutch , and is more a crossbreed , eg likes good food, but rather a gogetter in life. At least that's the stereotype...

Historically all power was in the French part,
Flanders was farmville, Wallonie was big industrie. Clerics , education , it was all French spoken untill the Wars came.

These daysthere is a Flemish overweight in number of people.




Now , in my opionon, comes the real cause of all the problems:
We do not have a right to vote.
We have a duty to vote.

This means , we are by law required to go vote.
Politicians , because of this, do not have to work for voter turnout.
Why should they, the law already guarantees it (mostly).

Result : a very volatile , short term vision during election campagins.
Win 800000 votes this election, loose em again the next.

That's the first part.






The second part is that they have managed to split the ballots betwen Flemish and the Walloon region.

I live in Flanders, as such my ballot will only give me the choice of Flemish Candidates.
Somebody living in Herstal, would have a completely different list of names

For most people, that's just fine.



But then we get to Brussels. Brussels, Historically is a Flemish city.
Historically as in 500 years ago..
But 200 years ago, it has since become a French speaking city, As the powers that be, Royals , gubment, clerics , all spoke French...

So Brussels became a seperate setup for elections, they get both lists.
And the same happened for a number of border towns and what not.

You got Flemish Socialists, and Walloon Socialist, Flemish christian democrats, Walloon CD's, flemish liberals, and Walloon liberals.
They are supposed to work together cross languages , but that is no guarantee.


In a simple world , even that "could" work.





But people move about.. Brussels expands as do most big cities these day and age.
French population spreads a bit to , into other Flemish towns around Brussels.

So now they need double lists as well, which the Flemish see as a no way jose kinda thing.
It's a never ending story, that cannot be resolved




Anyway, because of the above crap, we can only form a govermenet with coalitions.
No single party could ever hope to be a majority on it's own, it's near impossible.
So we have more career politicians then the Catholic Bisshops have little boys.
And they al want a paying seat in some kind of cabinet.


After the election the biggest party was a Flemish party in favor of splitting Belgium
55% they keep saying, we are the majority.
Big hoopla.. But in effect, they are not , they are just the majority in Flanders, in Belgium it's just 25%. Not quite the majority as such.



So they got new parliaments for the language areas, further complicating things. As the video in my first post shows.

We have more Ministers and secretary of States then France, a country that is 6 times bigger in population and size.

In my opinion they should just do away with mandatory voting and put federal ballots so any Belgian can vote for every Belgian candidate.