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While CD&V is shaking to its foundations, Deputy Prime Minister Koen Geens is fitting for the next government. Not out of indolence, he swears. “I’m going to support Avanti and get through our conference.”
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His decision was not supposed to be leaked now. The deputy prime minister, who started to think about it this summer, did not want to reveal them until after the accession congress for the Vivaldi government, he says.
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The fact that nothing remains inside rooms in the Wetstraat is one of those things that Geens is finding it increasingly difficult to deal with. At CD&V it has been open day for months. The WhatsApp group of the CD&V mayors, which Coens set up after taking office, seems hacked: everything that mayors say ends up in editorial offices. Especially when the message is: “Christian Democracy is dead if we jump into a purple-green government.”
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There is mainly speculation about Geens’ attitude, who has fans but also opponents. Geens was an open supporter of the Purple & Yellow and anything but a supporter of Vivaldi. But time and again the concern was raised that he would be able to step up if he could seize the highest office, the prime minister.
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Just about that, it has been getting louder for weeks that CD&V chairman Joachim Coens did not think about Geens at all for that position. The chairman has planned to go into government for radical renewal, to perpetuate the survival of his party. Ideally Hilde Crevits came – against her will – from the Flemish level. With the young violence of Sammy Mahdi next to her.
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At some point, everyone has to stand behind the chairman.
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Did Geens feel the direction of the wind and keep the honor to himself? No, it sounds.
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‘I myself have decided some time ago that it would not be good for the party if I remained in the foreground. It is up to the new chairman and the new faces to make their mark. Was my expiration date passed? Not yet, but I’ve never had the habit of letting that get that far in my career. We have been very open about this in the party. I myself have the space to Hilde (Crevits, red.) when it turned out that I was not the obvious prime minister. ‘ That did not help either: it is now clear that the premiership will not go to CD&V.
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Quitting when the tent is on fire and the chairman can no longer count the blows: isn’t that a disavowal of Coens and the so-called Avanti project in which he deposited the party? It is no secret that things are not going well between Coens and Geens. When Geens, in collaboration with the palace, had himself made into an informateur against Coens’s will this spring, the latter saw it as an undermining of his authority.
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But Geens says he just wants to support his chairman. ‘At some point, everyone has to stand behind the chairman. My decision has nothing to do with Avanti. I will support that and even drag it through our conference. Yes, I preferred purple-yellow. But I support Avanti now, because it is the only option left. And you always have to look at how things are now. ‘
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Revenge of Open VLD
Yet his decision is not unrelated to what has happened since the fall of the Michel government. It was no fun that Geens was left behind in the core cabinet only with liberals of the second garnish after the exit of N-VA. He could have sat in Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès’ chair – and stayed put. Geens tried to attract the Sixteen when Charles Michel and Didier Reynders (MR) took refuge in Europe last year. But Open VLD let him hit the wall. The liberals have never forgotten that the professor – often charming, sometimes pedantic – tricked them in the Di Rupo government with the liquidation bonus.
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People often see a terrible cock in me, but I am not.
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Geens also hit the wall when he thought he had found the key to glue the N-VA and the PS together: a far-reaching regionalization. PS chairman Paul Magnette’s donkey stamp led to his statement ‘we are not the mop of Wetstraat.’
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Geens is no longer angry with Magnette. To Geens’ great frustration, it is the liberals who have shot purple-yellow to shreds.
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Cock
However, the justice minister is not necessarily an N-VA fan. But Geens was convinced that this stalled country can only continue with a seventh state reform. He cannot now shout his frustration about that from the rooftops. Coens’ attempt to get Vivaldi to be swallowed up by the supporters stands or falls with the credibility of the institutional package in the coalition agreement. Only ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’ and the appetite among the liberals and the greens is small.
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Geens contradicts that he missed the crown on the work with the prime minister. ‘People often see a terrible cock in me, but I am not.’
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He returns to the Chamber, where, according to sources, the presidency is waiting for him. Geens dismisses that: “I didn’t ask my chairman anything.”
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