Stavros Kelepouris is journalist.
What will be the decisive theme in the grand-cru election year of 2024? Some caution is needed when answering this question, because with five months of elections, there is plenty of time for political slip-ups. Five and a half months from the end, the Michel government seemed to be quietly expanding, until someone shouted ‘Marrakech’ very loudly. N-VA left the government, Michel went to the king a few days later with his C4, and Vlaams Belang was the laughing third when migration turned out to be the political theme of the moment.
Barring such events, there is a good chance that one election theme will overshadow all others. Migration, security, confederalism – each time it will essentially be about one basic need: security of existence.
The war on the edge of Europe, the energy crisis and economic aftershocks such as sky-high inflation or more expensive housing loans: they have all contributed to a feeling of unease among broad sections of the population. But they didn’t cause that feeling, rather they reinforced it.
Sociologist Mark Elchardus, columnist for this newspaper, describes it as decline: the feeling that future generations will be worse off than us. This impression exists among a very large and growing part of the voting public, according to Elchardus. And, importantly, the fear of decline is a very strong political and electoral driver.
It is the habitat in which the extreme parties, the parties with the radical answers, thrive best. Vlaams Belang has not become the largest party in the polls because Flanders has suddenly become racist en masse – although it can do no harm to continue to emphasize that of all parties, Vlaams Belang serves racists best.
Vlaams Belang in Flanders and PTB in Wallonia are soaring because they use a discourse that feeds on the fear of decline and gives people impossibly simple solutions to hold on to. Are shopping cart prices increasing? Then PVDA simply freezes the price of fruit and vegetables. Economic madness – unless the government makes up the difference in price, but then PVDA will also subsidize Marc Coucke’s shopping cart – but it sounds so temptingly simple.
Vlaams Belang and PTB are by no means the only ones who sense this undercurrent. Vooruit’s slogan almost literally expresses the feeling of impending decline: “It’s Forward, or it’s Backwards.” And Bart De Wever’s pre-campaign – “For Flemish Prosperity” – does exactly the same: vote N-VA or impoverishment awaits you.
It is not surprising that Groen and Open Vld do not thrive in that context. Social security is not a theme that voters associate with Green. Well with Open Vld. But that party chose the noble but difficult path for itself: countering pessimism. Prime Minister Alexander De Croo does not miss an opportunity to emphasize that our country is doing well, despite its many shortcomings. Objectively he is right: there has never been a better time in history to live in Belgium than today. But the annoying thing is that anxious voters are often hard of hearing facts.
