A good day in Flanders

Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, 09 October 2006 11:06.

A very good day, in fact. Vlaams Belang’s chairman, Frank Vanhecke, characterised his Party’s local election performance as “a landslide”. But mindful, no doubt, of the political Establishment’s past record he said, “There is no way to disregard this victory.”

From The Indy:-

Early results showed the party had gained 5.6 percentage points to reach 20.6 per cent in the 308 municipal councils across Flanders, the northern Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and surged beyond its traditional stronghold in Antwerp.

However in Antwerp itself, Belgium’s second largest city, the party appeared to be simply treading water, winning the same one third of the vote that it captured in the last regional elections. That made it far from clear that the Vlaams Belang, which means Flemish Interest, had made enough progress to force other parties to allow it to share power.

Actually, VB increased its vote share in Antwerp to 33.5%. Its relegation from first to second place came about through dramatic gains by the Socialists, inspired by their popular mayor Patrick Janssens. They took 35.3% of the city’s vote, in large measure because support for Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt’s Flemish Liberal Democrats fell away badly. “The average trend of the Party is not so good,” he said, “We must acknowledge that the government has had a few bad months and we know that whoever leads faces the most fire.”

Now, as before, we will see the anti-Flemish parties in Antwerp form a coalition to keep VB out of power. The road is a long one for VB. But these results are their best ever, and demonstrate that that road is being travelled all across Flanders.

Tags: European Nationalism

Comments:

Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Mon, 09 Oct 2006 12:03 | #

Mind you, that 20,6 % is an average, the smallest Flemish village included.

In Antwerp there has been a polarisation between socialist mayor Patrick Janssen who conducted a “presidential” campaign at the detriment of his coalition partners and on the other side Filip Dewinter from Vlaams Belang. In Antwerp itself Vlaams Belang only had a minor advance because of mass immigration and naturalisation and because of the new voting right for foreigners. But in the Antwerp suburbs, Vlaams Belang skyrocketed.

Probably more “explosive” will be the national Belgian elections early next year.

Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Mon, 09 Oct 2006 12:38 | #

Vlaams Belang increases its number of municipal councillors from 439 to approximately 800, because the municipal electoral system in Flanders is biased towards large parties, see http://www.standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelId=DMF09102006_059
(in Dutch).

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:15 | #

The road is a long one for VB. But these results are their best ever, and demonstrate that that road is being travelled all across Flanders. (—from the log entry)

Long live Free Flanders!

Posted by john on Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:32 | #

Will these results have any effect on the upcoming court case?

Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:24 | #

These electoral results won’t have any effect on the upcoming court case concerning Vlaams Belang’s party finance (with the aim to strangle the party financially).

Vlaams Belang is accused of “discrimination”, “Islamophobia” and “racism”.

The case was initiated by the Walloons with the help of the Flemish socialists.

Now Vlaams Belang wants to challenge all French-speaking judges (half of the Belgian State Council) and also all judges who are members of the lodge http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Orient_de_Belgique

See (in Dutch) http://www.vlaamsbelang.org/index.php?p=0&id=2261 and
http://www.vlaamsbelang.org/index.php?p=0&id=2263

But in pure inquisition style the Vlaams Belang is even denied to know the names of its judges. Vlaams Belang will only know them the day they enter the court.

Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Wed, 18 Oct 2006 13:44 | #

Yesterday October 17, 2006 was day 1 of the (new) Vlaams Belang trial, to deprive Vlaams Belang of their essential public funding. Apparently the Judiciary “waited” until the municipal elections in Belgium were passed…

One of the incidents of day 1 was that the council for the plaintiff was a French-speaker, but without interpreters for the Vlaams Belang defendants…BTW, the Vlaams Belang lawyers wanted this fact to enter in the minutes, but this turned out to be impossible because the clerk of the court is a French-speaker who doesn’t know enough Dutch himself…

Another incident yesterday was that the State Council Public Prosecutor hold a long argument, but “unfortunately” he could not be heard beyond 2 meters distance. A written version of his speech was not available. After all, the Vlaams Belang lawyers were refused to respond…isn’t the last word in court for the defence????, see (in Dutch) http://www.vlaamsbelang.org/index.php?p=0&id=2451

Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:59 | #

In a second reading of the Vlaams Belang text above about their trial I picked out another remarkable fact, which is confirmed in this article from the Flemish quality newspaper De Standaard, see (in Dutch) http://www.standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelId=GTS12LNFC

Half of the 22 judges at the Belgian State Council are French-speakers and many of them even don’t understand Dutch. But the State Council president refuses to order the translation of the incriminated documents from Dutch into French. So those French-speaking judges will have to judge about texts they neither can read nor understand…so this looks bad for Vlaams Belang.

BTW, for one year, a conviction would cost the party two million euros. But of course after that year a new plaint is possible and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on…

For the time being no new date for a new court session has been established.