21 september 2020
21:34
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Even if government negotiators do take the plunge in the next 48 hours, the question remains whether they will be able to shake off today’s manifest mistrust.
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It often happens that a crisis erupts in the last straight line to a coalition agreement. One last unexpected bump on the way to the finish. A fight to put the negotiations in the final fold. After which the new team can work in unison.
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Distrust still rages through the room when the seven party chairmen of the Vivaldi coalition sit together.
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But what happened on Sunday and Monday in the coalition talks between liberals, socialists, greens and CD&V is much more serious than that. It shows that suspicion still rages through the room when the seven party chairmen of the Vivaldi coalition sit together.
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Monday’s incident was not about what was on the negotiating table. It was about who can sit at the table. Sp.a chairman Conner Rousseau decided on Monday after the party bureau that the Flemish socialists no longer want to continue with MR chairman Georges-Louis Bouchez. The Flemish liberals, who in the negotiations on Purple-Yellow this summer, did not accept that N-VA chairman Bart De Wever wanted to split the MR and Open VLD, see the liberal family as one and indivisible.
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At CD&V they themselves doubt whether it is a good idea to sit at the table. Chairman Joachim Coens has plunged into the negotiations, but when he looks over his shoulder, he sees that many Christian Democrats have not yet decided to follow him and take up their cross.
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And then there is Georges-Louis Bouchez. He is sitting in a seat because he is the only one who can walk away from the negotiating table and thus keep the prime minister and six other ministers for his party. And of course it is his job to fight for the liberal accents in the text. But by showing up hours late, returning to appointments and giving interviews, he overplayed his hand this weekend in an arrogant and clumsy way.
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At the same time, he unnecessarily snubbed the PS on Twitter, who would love to see the MR leave the Wetstraat Zestien. That issue led to the word breakdown last Thursday about the refusal of the vote of confidence in the Chamber, which allows Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès to play extensions. The future opposition parties on the right and left are likely to drink a glass of champagne or a workman’s drink every day.
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Yet the formation continues, because the king wants it. That shows how the Vivaldi negotiators have to decide for the next 48 hours – until the preformateurs are back at the palace – whether to take the plunge. Not that everything is resolved then. There is still the thorny question of who will be the boss of this squad and the country’s next prime minister. There remains the difficult balance between unpopular savings or introducing taxes and finding money for popular new measures, such as higher minimum pensions. There is the question of how quickly the budget can become healthy again. And above all: how long will the manifest mistrust of today hang over this team like a shadow?
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The only consideration for taking the leap of faith is that for the parties of this center coalition – even if they do not like to admit it – a failure of the formation is an even greater leap into the deeper.
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