Joël De Ceulaer is senior writer.
Of course, almost everyone will say it’s a bad idea. That the party that drops the government is always punished for it in the elections. That you better stay at the table to keep the coalition partners in check, or to bring them to an understanding. In other words, that you better take your responsibility, and don’t run away.
And yet Groen has to leave the federal government with immediate effect. Every day that the party still spends at the same table as Secretary of State for Asylum & Migration Nicole de Moor (cd&v), she is sucked deeper into the morass of moral bankruptcy.
It has been written and denounced repeatedly in recent weeks that Vivaldi’s asylum policy is not only totally illegal, but differs little from what the radical right would do. The road to total dehumanization has been set, the limits of what a liberal democracy can accept have long since been crossed.
At first, women and children slept in the freezing cold on the streets. Then people shrugged at the thousands of convictions for not providing shelter. Then this government approved the disgusting Tunisia deal – as a reminder, a deal with a president who drives people into the desert to die of hunger and thirst. Now illegal policy has become the rule in Belgium itself. Single men no longer receive help and shelter. That decision did not come quietly, in the deepest secrecy, was not hidden, but communicated openly. Read: Vivaldi is not embarrassed by a measure that all parties in the government should condemn. Even the heroes of Refugee Work decided to give up. They no longer want to compensate for the human shortage of this government by providing shelter themselves.
It stops somewhere.
That conclusion must also be drawn by Groen. The longer the party continues to debate this with hollow political debate tokens, the more tragic it becomes. No, this is not an influx crisis, this is not a reception crisis, this is a political crisis: a policymaker who wants to solve this can solve this. Green is complicit in the contempt for human rights. That goes straight to the heart of the party. It is to be hoped that green voters consider this essential. The time for talk and subterfuge is over. To use a typical one-liner on the debate tokens, a Signal is needed. It will not come from Christian Democrats, Liberals or Socialists. Someone needs to voice the voices of voters horrified by this policy. And then those voters will pay for that.
In The seventh day said co-chair Nadia Naji that she is often asked what Groen will do after the elections: govern again with the traditional parties or not. That question is pointless. If Green stays in Vivaldi, what happened in 2003, when Agalev was swept out of the Chamber, will happen.
The greens are again on the edge of the abyss. It is now or never.
