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Old 2010-06-15, 02:01   Link #7806
TinyRedLeaf
Moving in circles
 
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 49
Separatists' poll victory widens Belgian divisions
Quote:
Brussels (June 13): The move to break up Belgium gathered pace today as separatists won an emphatic election victory in Flanders, the more prosperous Dutch-speaking region of the divided nation.

A stunning electoral success for Bart de Wever's Flemish nationalist party, which won the most parliamentary seats, is a significant new challenge to the fragile unity of a federal country where tensions between French and Dutch speakers run deep, and where voters in one region cannot vote for parties in the other.

It has also injected a new element of uncertainty into Europe at an especially difficult time for the European Union, struggling with serious problems over its finances and currency.

Belgium is due to assume the rotating presidency of the EU in less than three weeks. But it is likely to take months to negotiate a new coalition, raising the prospect that Belgium will be struggling to assemble its own government at precisely the time it is supposed to be steering Europe out of a deep crisis.

In 2007, after the last general election, it took the Belgians roughly nine months to form a coalition government, a measure of the centrifugal forces threatening to destroy the already-loose federal state, or to make it even less relevant than it is today.

NEW YORK TIMES
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