Deceit, Humiliation, Shame and Blue Oranges

In French, there is a funny sounding expression, with a very ominous and grave meaning: “to cross the yellow line.” When you cross the yellow line, you go past a point of no return, you do something that is irremediable, and you had better be prepared to take responsibility for your decision.

In Belgium, three linguistic communities coexist—coexisted until yesterday. Their pacific coexistence was insured by unspoken rules such as “all the important decisions which might change even the tiniest little thing in the rights of any one community, or change the structure of the state will always been taken solely when there is a majority in favor in every single community.”

Yesterday, that essential principle was trampled from underfoot, and the Flemish community used what is known as the “Institutional Nuclear Bomb”. The Flemish community, which represents 60% of the Belgian population, voted a law that all French-speaking people and the French community opposes. The Flemish political parties did so in spite of ongoing negotiations, after delivering an ultimatum for getting a “suitable result” to these ongoing negotiations. Of course, it also happens that Mr Leterme, the person in charge of those negotiations to form a government, who is the candidate to the position of prime minister, is also the one who:

• deliberately delayed talking about the problem which “triggered” the Flemish vote until the last minute, every time it landed on the table. This problem was thus not discussed, because of this oh so wonderful and worthy candidate prime minister, until two days prior to a moment when a parliamentary commission would be able to seize the matter and pass a vote on it.
  
• is one of the figureheads of the main Flemish party, coupled with another, extremist and nationalist Flemish party. And he has been either unable or unwilling to hold his troops in check and prevent them from going ahead with a vote in parliamentary commission that is tantamount to a true, hones-to-god war declaration with the French community.
  
• already proved his worth and more by stating in an interview in a French national newspaper that the Walloons were intellectually unable to learn Dutch, meaning mentally retarded.

I should add, that our sublime, outstanding candidate for prime minister also demonstrated his amazing qualities of leadership when he fled a meeting of the Flemish political parties (including his own, which weighs the most in these negotiations) and left them to decide for themselves what they’d do come the morning of the vote: consider that their demands had been met, or go ahead with the vote and detonating the institutional nuclear bomb. So brave of him! Running away, instead of staying, rising above his own community and showing that he can, really, be the prime minister of all the Belgian citizens, of all the communities.

Because of his inadequacy, of his ineptitude, the yellow line has been crossed. The Flemish parties have voted, along side with a fascist, far-right and nationalist extremist party. The Flemish side of Belgium has sold its collective soul to worse than the devil, all for three letters, BHV, and to satisfy a stupid, unwarranted thirst for vengeance due to their being stuck in the past, and a false imagery of “French-speakers domination” (it’s so easy to forget that their own upper class was the one which humiliated them, and their own upper class spoke French, while the people on the other side, as poor as they, and as humiliated as they, spoke the Walloon dialects, and were crushed under the boot of a French speaking elite, meaning that all the elites in Belgium spoke French at the time, while the people on every side spoke dialect, be it Flemish or Walloon, but they so like to forget about that).

Worse, there are insistent rumors that this whole scenario was co-written with Mr. “I want POWER NOW and without the socialists” Reyndens, in order to get rid of the BHV problem. If that were to be true, then Mr Reynders deserves to be sent back into the opposition for a very, very long time. Mr Reynders is unworthy of holding any position of power, at any level whatsoever. There are prices you just CANNOT accept to pay, no matter how much you lust after what is offered in exchange.

The decision of the king to keep Mr Leterme as the head of negotiations to form a government is alarming. More, it is shameful, and humiliating for the whole French speaking population. The very measured response of the Walloon political parties called upon to form the “Blue Orange” government is also more than distressing. They are fast losing all credibility and I’m not sure people here will love being represented by ass-kissers who’re so happy to continue licking the boots of those who just kicked them in the mud.

Mr Leterme has disqualified himself for the position of prime minister. He will never be the representative of Belgium, he has shown that more than clearly. He’s unworthy of it, irremediably so. He must go, if there is to be a federal government.

And quite frankly, if the Wallon parties accept to paly in the current game of the Flemish parties, the coalition they will form will maybe be an Orange, but it will not be Blue.

It will be a Brown Orange.

And Brown, in this context, is the color of the far-right, fascist parties.

So, Mr Reynders, Mrs Milquet, if I were you, I'd think well, I'd think long before yielding to any kind of temptation to get power in your hands. Some things come with a price I'm quite sure you can't afford to pay.

If you forget about this, you can be certain that the voters won't. The next elections are in 2009. And that's already knocking at our door.

See you then...