fwd from :
"Jan Matthieu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Dear friends, how do you scream in e-mail
?YAAAAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIII !!!!!!! We
WON!!!!
We even won big, for Belgian standards. In all the assemblies on the
Flemish
side the greens increase their seats with 13 newcomers -- mostly women
-- (coming from 14) to 27. And in the southern part of Belgium,
Walloni�, it's even better. This makes us the second largest fraction in
the federal parliament. So there was reason to party yesterday,
resulting in a headache and upset stomach now.
We also send two instead of one representatives to the European
parliament. And our the same applies to our friends from Ecolo. The
greens won all over Europe in different degrees.
The downside of things: the extreme right won in Flanders, and the
rightist
liberals became the largest political family. The Christian Democrats
lost
big, and so did the Socialists. The prime minister, the fat guy,
Dehaene, is
leaving national politics. It's funny with such a name to finally
stumble over chickens. (For the non-lingu�sts here: Dehaene means in
Flemish, the Cock).The country may become less stable now. The
initiative for the formation of the different governments, Flemish,
Brussels and federal Belgian, lies with the liberals.
They can only get a majority in Flanders with a minimum of three
parties. We
speculate that will probably be the Christian Democrats, who still are
second largest, and the Flemish Nationalist Volksunie, who also gained
seats, and are ideologically closest to the liberals. Probably they will
first invite the greens also, but I guess they will not want to govern
with
us, as our program is too radically social and critical of capitalist
interests.
For the federal government it is even more complicated. Also in Walloni�
the
greens (Ecolo) made a very big leap forward (there is no extreme right
to
speak of over there). But the liberals are also biggest there. It will
be
more difficult not to bring the greens in government there, but the same
problem with program is there. Another thing is, that the Ecolo-greens
will
not join a government without the flemish Agalev-greens. For the local
Walloon government, the greens could be asked to join however.
It will be most difficult to build a federal government, as green and
blue
(liberals) are very difficult to bring together, our programs are very
different. I think we are in for very long and tedious negotiations. I
will
know more in days to come, and it looks like there will not be much time
left for reading and writing on this list.
One thing is already certain: in Brussels we can only stop the extreme
right
with a government coalition of all the other democratic parties. This
promises to become interesting and... yes, difficult. It will probably
be the first thing I may have to attend to, as 'my' council will have to
give the go-ahead for starting negotiations from the greens side. We
have a meeting tomorrow evening. PS: This was written with a serious
hangover, so sorry for typing errors. PPS: Hope you don't mind I wanted
to share this, for me and most greens, best news in the last ten
years. Cheers, Jan MatthieuFlemish Greens
