Today is once again Belgian National Day! A day off work! Military parades in Brussels! General joy and jubilation!

Or not. At least not that last part, for it’s hard to get very enthusiastic about a country which a while ago broke the world record for operating without a proper, approved government after its last elections (which happened at the beginning of June, 2010). Instead we have newspaper editorials marking the day like the one impishly offered by Liesbeth van Impe in the Nieuwsblad, entitled Fear and Cynicism. And as the latest in a long line of formateurs (politicians appointed by the king to cobble together a workable governing coalition), a bow-tie-wearing dude called Elio di Rupo, finds himself having to deal with squabbling political parties and scheduled negotiation-meetings that fail to convene, the prospect continues to hang over the country that a split-up might be the only solution left.

Hmm . . . a National Day for a nation on the verge of separating roughly down the middle. Don’t know about you, but that reminds me of 150 years ago and July 4, 1861, when all of the states that were to make up the Confederacy had seceded, and blue and grey armies were headed towards each other on respective sides of the new internal border. Especially since that day was described recently in an excellent New York Times piece, one in its “Disunion” series marking that 150th anniversary. (more…)

As I noted in this previous post, July 21 – yesterday – is each year the Belgian National Holiday: think along the lines, for example, of the 4th of July in the US. Except that yesterday in Belgium the occasion was more like America on 4 July 1860: then, Abraham Lincoln had just been nominated to be the Republican Party candidate for the upcoming presidential election in November, and it was evident that, while he had a good chance of sweeping the more-populated Northern states with his party platform forbidding any more slavery in US territories, nobody in the South would vote for him. Indeed, if he turned out to win the presidency nonetheless (which of course he did), there was very likely to be serious trouble, yet it was hard to think of any alternative scenario by which the presidency could be won by any of the other candidates, each of which were politicians backed by yet-narrower sections of the country. Likewise, there was precious little of any “national” nature to be celebrated in Belgium on its “National Holiday” yesterday, even as one can assume that any similar implicit prospect of violence does not apply in this modern case.

When last we left portly, avuncular old King Albert II, he had received Prime Minister Yves Leterme’s resignation but had yet to decide whether to accept it. (more…)

Don’t look now – but Belgium is once again in a governmental crisis. Prime Minister Yves Leterme yesterday evening (Monday, 14 July) submitted his resignation to King Albert II, after having served in that capacity for thirteen months. You’ll recall that Leterme – leader of the Flemish political party Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams (CD&V) – had been the compromise candidate for prime minister in the first place, voted in by the kaleidoscope of Dutch-, French-, and German-speaking parties of the Belgian political landscape pretty much in desperation after nine months of haggling after the latest national elections of June, 2007. July 15 (i.e. today) was the deadline he had set to be able to present a new plan for re-structuring Belgium’s governmental structure. It seemed that the deadline was coming up fast and little to no progress on forming such a plan had been made. So Leterme resigned. The Economist weblog “Certain ideas of Europe” is keeping on top of developments with an summary entry Time to dissolve Belgium?. (more…)