Are politicians bankers? Well, if
they are, they are not very good
ones. This we learn from the
Dexia saga, in which politicians
were involved at every stage.
The Blackberry and Twitter
habits of Yves Leterme (CD&V)
have been the subject of many
jokes, but when our caretaker
prime minister tweeted
that this week is “crucial
for our future prosperity,”
everyone sat up and listened.
“Everyone should realise that
the budgetary efforts in this
country have become very
urgent,” Leterme explained
afterwards.
If elections were held today,
N-VA would get 35% of the
vote, a recent poll by De
Standaard and VRT shows.
In Flanders, with its divided
political landscape, that would
be a spectacular result.
Communities and regions in
Belgium often seem entirely
different worlds from the federal
state. This has the obvious
advantage that we can go without
a federal government for over
a year, without collapsing into
chaos. However, the regions and
communities are not completely
separate from the federal state:
After all, it is all about the same
people.
“Frankie goes to Brussels.” The
catch phrase with which Frank
Vandenbroucke propelled himself
into national politics sounded
very ’80s and deceptively trendy.
Vandenbroucke never was the
coolest of politicians, though. In
fact, he was often described as
“the cleverest boy in class” or “the
professor”.
The first memory many
journalists have of Yves
Leterme is that of a number-crunching
MP, around 2000.
The Verhofstadt government,
the first without Christian-democrats
in decades, was
riding high, and CD&V seemed
doomed. How in the world was
this man, solid but boring, going
to change all that?
Wetstraatees, the jargon used
in the Brussels Wetstraat, the
heart of Belgian politics, is full
of archaisms, but every now
and then a neologism pops
up. One of those is “lap note”:
quite literally a note sitting on
someone’s lap.
If you want to make a Flemish
politician burst out laughing,
try uttering the words “political
renewal”. Political renewal came
en vogue some 10 years ago,
when politicians wanted to
regulate their own trade better,
to increase their credibility.
They looked into their own
performance (non-attendance
being endemic), the way they
combine different jobs and their
wages.
In Dutch, people who cannot
wait to get ahead in their careers
are called “table jumpers”. Inge
Vervotte, the CD&V minister
who last week announced she
is leaving politics, is anything
but a table jumper. Still, at only
33, she has an impressive career
to look back on, as a minister
in the Flemish and federal
governments.
Elections are coming up! Not
new federal elections (although
with the negotiations dragging
on, that remains a possibility),
but local elections, in October
of 2012. That may seem like a
long way off, but the campaign
is already on. If he didn’t know
it already, Antwerp mayor
Patrick Janssens found that out
this month, as violence broke
out in the conflicted Seefhoek
neighbourhood.
Flanders Today is a 
