PM Yves Leterme's government has collapsed, despite him dressing up as a member of the Time Lord High Council to try and increase his authority

The government of Belgium has collapsed as part of a row between Dutch speaking and French speaking politicians.

This is good news for Belgian Muslims, who were facing the possibility of a racist legal attack, as Belgium was poised to become the first European country to ban Muslim women from covering their faces. However, the law, which was just about to be debated, has been delayed by the political crisis.

Belgian is split between Dutch speaking Flanders in the North and French speaking Wallonia in the South. Which region you are in decides which language is officially used in all official capacities, and the two different regions each have their own political parties. The city of Brussels in the centre is a bilingual district, but the row centres on breaking up this district into French and Dutch speaking areas. They argue it includes solely Dutch speaking towns round about the city. The Dutch speaking Liberals have quit the coalition government, claiming the French speaking parties are trying to block this process.

At the root of the crisis is inequality between the regions. In the past Wallonia was the industrial powerhouse of Belgium, and Flanders was poor. However, in the last 20-30 years this has changed around, with the decline of industry in Wallonia causing massive unemployment, while in the North the Flemish economy has experienced big growth based on neoliberal policies, finance and also the port of Antwerp, which is the third biggest port in the world.

Right wing Flemish politicians represent the resentment of Flemish bosses at the cost of supporting the unemployed and social services needed in Wallonia in their taxes, and demand more autonomy for their region. However, this is also overlaid with historical resentment by most Flemish people at the exploitation and oppression of Flemings when things were different in the past.

What happens next isn’t clear. The PM Yves Leterme has submitted his resignation to King Albert, who has not immediately accepted it but started consultations with politicians about the way forward. The whole crisis has been rumbling along for some time, and could conceivably could lead to the break up of Belgium. Last year rows over the same issue helped contribute towards a situation where Belgium had no government for 194 days!

Although the racist anti-Muslim law may well be scuppered for now by the crisis, the desire to curb the rights of Muslim women to wear what they want is unfortunately one of the few things that unites the mainstream parties across the linguistic divide. So it may well be resurrected when Belgium does have a government again. Anti-racists need to use the breathing space to try and organise against it.

Ultimately, the political crisis in Belgium will keep rumbling along as long as the country’s economic model remains committed to neoliberalism. Belgium needs to help the people of all the regions by taking their resources into public ownership and redistributing wealth to help alleviate the poverty and unemployment caused by right wing policies.

Bonus: For more in depth info about the economic and political background in Belgium, check out this article written during the governmental crisis last year.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 1:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.