Politics, anyone?

The current world record is 289 days.
Belgium is heading for that world record. We are on our way to have the longest government formation period ever! And guess who’s the current record holder… Iraq!
A world record to be proud of? I don’t think so.

I’ve been thinking about writing a blogpost on the political situation in Belgium for a while, but when I started blogging, this was one of the topics I was going to avoid.
I’m not going to give you my personal point of view though, all I want to do is give you an overview of what’s been going on here in the last months. Try not to laugh.

We had elections on June 13, last year. Our politicians at that time thought it would be a good idea to organize early elections, so that the next elections (regional, national and European) would all be held on the same day, somewhere in 2014. It would give our responsible ministers plenty of time to reform Belgium and to reshape it into a puzzle of regions, all with their own income and responsibilities. What are we going to be???? The United States of Belgium?

June 14: the king starts his consultations

June17: Bart De Wever, main winner of the elections in Flanders is announced as informer: he needs to gather information about what parties want and who wants to form a coalition with whom.

July 8: Elio Di Rupo, main winner of the elections in Wallonie is the “preformateur”. He needs to find a consensus between the parties.

August 29: Di Rupo doesn’t succeed and resigns as preformateur.

September 4: The king asks two former ministers  to act as mediators in order to revive the negotiating process.

October 8: Bart De Wever gets the clarification task. No kidding! He has to try to converge the viewpoints of the negotiating parties in 10 days.

October 21: Johan Vande Lanotte, a new mediator on the scene.

December 25: Belgium breaks the old Belgian record of 194 days, set in 2007.

January 6: Vande Lanotte resigns. The king refuses his resignation and sends him back to work.

January 26: Vandelanotte again requested the King to be relieved of his task, to which the King agreed.

January 27: Our king starts another round of consultations.

February 1: It is expected that King Albert will take a new initiative to unblock the political stalemate that has had Belgium in its hold since the general election on June 13.

Informer-preformateur-mediator-clarificator-new mediator. There must be a language specialist/fantasist working among our king’s staff.

233 days after the elections, we didn’t take one step forward. There’s one thing I’m convinced of: we will break the world record on March 30, 2011.
Please let me be mistaken.