All that Belgium wants for Christmas is a government — and thousands of people marched through Brussels yesterday to demand that politicians should avoid the break-up of their country.

Talks on forming a coalition after elections in June are dragging on acrimoniously and there is no sign of an end to the impasse. Christian Democrats in the Flemish north are seeking greater independence, but Liberals in the French-speaking south fear that this will cause the country to divide.

The warring politicians were the target of yesterday’s demonstrators, who were bedecked with the black, gold and red of the national flag, with not a party affiliation in sight.

But the 161-day political stand-off fuelled discussion of whether Belgium, founded in 1830, had reached the end of the road. Newspapers have debated the “Czechoslovakia option” and analysed the amounts of tax that wealthy Flemings would save if they did not have to contribute to welfare payments in the south, where unemployment is three times higher.

In a sign of the division between the two main language communities, there were noticeably more French-speaking marchers than those from the Flemish north, where support for national unity is more ambivalent.

The demonstration grew out of a website petition to “Save Belgium”, which attracted 140,000 signatures in three months. Although about 35,000 marched yesterday, it was still a small percentage of the 10.5 million population and even among the demonstrators there was widespread pessimism about the prospects of a government before Christmas.

“We want to tell the politicians to stop playing in their sand pit,” said Marie-Claire Houard, who started the petition. “The politicians must involve the citizens and not just themselves. We have had enough of extremism.” Some marchers wanted a rethink of Belgium’s fractured political system, which has a national parliament, regional parliaments for Flanders in the north, Wallonia in the south and for a small German-speaking enclave, as well as linguistic-based assemblies for each group. Political parties are organised along language lines with no national group.

Emanuel D’Oultremont, a 61-year-old Bruxellois, said: “There is a dislocation between the politicians and the people. They represent their parties, not the country. It is because right at the beginning of federalism we did not set it up properly.”

Benedicte van der Wielen, 49, said: “People are fed up with politicians. I am tired of all their fights. The King is one of us. He just wants people to live together.”

King Albert II has made frequent appeals to politicians to find solutions. Although he is widely admired as the glue that holds Belgium together, he was booed last week in a sign of growing impatience with the ruling classes. The defeated Flemish Liberals continue to run a caretaker administration that cannot take major decisions.

Strained relations

1830 Belgium becomes independent from the Netherlands after riots over the treatment of French-speaking Catholics

1914-1918 and 1940-1944 Occupied by Germany

1958 Belgium and five other countries establish the European Economic Community, forerunner of the EU

1993 Division into three administrative regions: Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels

Source: Times Archives

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