The year 2024 will be the year of elections. The entire planet (except China, which will only worry about the Year of the Dragon, without annoying recounts) will be watching the polls, from the US in November to India in spring, passing through all Europeans in June. Media attention will be on the Iowa caucuses, on the Taiwan presidential elections, to see if the Portuguese socialists survive or if Putin achieves a new mandate despite fierce opposition. Not to mention Venezuela, Mexico or Indonesia. But if anyone is going to have fun this year, it is the Belgians, who have to elect the deputies in the summer, the members of the Parliaments of the different Communities and Regions and the MEPs. And in October, to mayors, councilors and provincial officials.
It’s going to be a show. The Belgian political system is one of the most complicated, twisted and fascinating that exists. Nobody, absolutely nobody, understands it, not even those responsible. The distribution of powers does not have the slightest coherence, there are duplications everywhere and the Constitution is a sudoku. And all, in the midst of an ideological chaos that allows him to risk fire, destruction and an attempt to beat his own world record for acting Executive.
The Goldbach conjecture or the Riemann hypothesis are childish games compared to making lists, distributing seats and, above all, forming a Government while respecting balance. Belgium is a kind of federal state with confederal characteristics. It has (almost) no national parties, but rather by language. There are two systems, two or three alienated public opinions and infinite unexpected pegs. The party with the most votes, at least until now, is the Flemish independence right, which will never be able to govern only due to legal limitations. A classic right-wing economic party, with increasingly harsh immigration rhetoric because the ultras are eating its toast. But a party capable of parking its speech without any problem when it is part of an Executive, always in a coalition and always led by others, since French speakers are not going to allow the opposite.
The analysts do not mess around, no polarization, no fragmentation: What they are already wondering is about the disappearance of the country. If the extreme right of Vlaams Belang confirms the leadership of the polls, it will revolutionize the board, because they have already said that they are going for it. And all this while the country holds the Presidency of the Council of the EU during the semester. Laugh at the anticipation called by Pedro Sanchez.
The socialists say that they do not accept the confederalism towards which the N-VA is pushing again. The greens, who will not join together again in a Government with the liberals of the MR, the party of Charles Michel, which could return to an Executive with the Flemish nationalists if they agree to renounce their rhetoric. The Marxist purists of the PTB stop joining anyone because they are consistent and love to lose. And nobody wants to touch the heirs of the neo-Nazis with a stick. An essayist speaks this week about cheating Belgian, the imbroglio, the tragicomedy, the farce. The good news is that the only ones who move in the mud like the Italians are them. The unit of measurement of the disorder of a system is not the entropy, it is the Belgium.