The sordid affair surrounding serial defector Dirk Vijnck has damaged Open VLD, once the largest Flemish party, which in recent polls scores only 17%. The party suffers another handicap, too, which CD&V detected early in the campaign when it asked: who is Open VLD’s candidate to become minister-president? That’s a tricky question.

Party president Bart Somers has been suffering from a lack of credibility for years. The Vijnck affair further harmed him. So, exit Somers. And enter… Dirk Van Mechelen.
Van Mechelen has been a well-respected minister in the Flemish government for almost 10 years, but he remains unknown to the public at large. There is a reason for this.

As budget and finance minister, Van Mechelen mostly speaks in numbers. He has neither the rhetorical talent nor the looks of a natural-born politician. Even at his own party congress, when delegates were eager to welcome him as the new liberal Messiah, his speech sounded shaky. And then there are those dreaded polls in which Van Mechelen lags far behind. Is this the man to challenge Kris Peeters, the current minister-president and obvious candidate to succeed himself?

Apparently so. Open VLD praises Van Mechelen, calling him “a Flandrien”, the name of the legendary cycling champions, who won not just because of their talent but because of their hard work. “When the rain is hard and the cobblestones crooked, when there is mud all around and you have your head in the wind, then you do not need a star actor, you need a Flandrien,” Verhofstadt said about Van Mechelen. (The “star actor” refers to Kris Peeters, who has in the past been likened to George Clooney.)

Van Mechelen is not the man to comment much on his own personality. He prefers to talk about issues. One of them is the controversial Oosterweel link, which is designed to connect the left bank of the Scheldt river with the ring road in northern Antwerp. It annoyed him immensely when the socialists had second thoughts about it. He wants to go ahead with the plans, which makes him one of the very few politicians who have not changed their mind about this issue so far.

Recently Van Mechelen has criticised the socialists for their plans to extend the public transport system and the Christian-democrats because there are still waiting lists for the disabled, despite an increased budget.

But will that be enough for this Flandrien to win the race?