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.
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.