Category: World Affairs

After missing out for a week, here he is, bigger and better… The one and only…. Dr. ARF! I must admit that I’ve been looking forward to this post for some time now, because… well, there’s juicy scandals and then there are Belgian juicy scandals. Enjoy! I know I have

LESSON IV : SOME JUICY SCANDALS

What with our good P reporting on Slovene scandals (just recently about the vrtički) (pengovsky’s note: At last, someone noticed!), I felt I couldn’t stay behind and give you the scoop on a choice of happenings over here that politicians, industry fat cats and other good law abiding citizens do that they don’t want to see the light of day. Let’s roll…

Willy Claes, former NATO chief who had to resign because of Agusta scandal

The Pink Ballets

In the early eighties, in the wake of the attacks of the so- called Bende van Nijvel (The Nivelles Gang), police detectives and journalists – I forgot who got there first – discovered a network of high society people, ministers, police chiefs, army top brass, judges, magistrates and captains of industry mingling with top gangsters. They all got together in secret elaborate mass orgies with a plethora of hookers (allegedly minors too), wine and dine. Deals were made there, people were blackmailed there, indiscretions on a large scale were swept under rugs… You name it, it happened. It showed that there was a small yet powerful network that had each other’s backs when it came to running the country and running its businesses. Suffice it to say, it created an outrage within the public and was never heard of since.

Westland New Post and the Shooting Clubs

Also in the wake of the Gang of Nivelles reign of terror (which was from ’82 to ’86, in which they attacked supermarkets, emptied cash registers and killed customers in military commando style, highly organized), it became apparent there was an extreme right undercurrent running through the state police and the army. They all came together under the banner of Westland New Post, an extremist right wing paramilitary movement, which organized shooting clubs. Two State Police officers, Madani Bouhouche and Robert �?Bob’ Beijer and a Walloon baron, Benoît de Bonvoisin, were members and were also suspected to have ties with the Nivelles Gang. Bouhouche and Beijer deserve their own chapter of scandals, really. They were also involved in killing weapons supplier Juan Mendez and the daylight robbery of a shipment of diamonds from Brussels National Airport. Nice cops we had here, in the 80’s… Robert Beijer was murdered, Bouchouche died under mysterious circumstances while living in France after his incarceration and de Bonvoisin has dwindled out of the limelight. And so has Westland New Post. Instead, we now have neo nazi skinheads, like everywhere else…
Funny side note : eleven years ago, I cooked for a camp of cub scouts on a terrain which lay next to Bonvoisin property. The weekly mag I read back then reported on the – still ongoing – investigation into… the Nivelles Gang attacks in the �?80’s.

Patrick Haemers and the VdB kidnapping

Still in the mid �?80’s, Brussels criminal Patrick Haemers kidnapped former prime minister Paul Vanden Boeynants. His accomplices were Axel Zeyen, Philippe Lacroix and a Kosovarian : Basri Bajrami.

Vdb, as he was then sympathetically known, was held in a villa in the north of France and released after payment of a hefty sum of money, now 1,5 million Euros. Haemers and his accomplices then escaped to Brazil and later extradited.
There are a few weird things going on here. First off, Haemers’ gang was specialized in robbing – rather brutally – money transports. Second, VdB was about to be indicted for embezzling state money and laundering it through his own meat processing company. While it was never sufficiently proven, it is widely accepted he staged his kidnapping. After all, he could afford it. Haemers getting caught was dangerous and could have implicated him. But Haemers died in his cell a while after being extradited. He hung himself… on his cell radiator. You’d really want to have to die to deliberately tightening the noose around your own neck when you can’t hang properly, don’t you? Or, how unlikely it may seem, Haemers was murdered because he knew too much. But that’s certainly not true, is it? Nah, couldn’t be : he really wanted to die, that’s the only real explanation… 👿

Insteresting side note : Philippe Lacroix got back into the news a few weeks ago, when it became known that he had studied to get a teacher’s degree in prison and was now looking for work as a teacher. At least someone paid their debt to society as well as cleaned up their act…

AGUSTA

In the early �?90’s, parliament needed to decide where to buy new helicopters. So, offers were made by companies and reviewed by a board. And after a meticulous selection process, the Italian company Agusta was chosen… Or, at least, that’s what the Belgian public thought.

But then came the news – those pesky investigative journos! – that bribes had been given to the key players in the selection process. And they were all from socialist parties. Walloons Guy Spitaels – or Dieu (God), as the Walloon socialists called him, Guy Coëme and Guy Mathot were behind it, as well as the Flemings Frank Vandenbroucke and then NATO secretary-general Willy Claes. No surprise when they all had to step down, albeit reluctantly.

But the clincher of this story is not the bribe, it is an interesting side note. Frank Vandenbroucke, then minister of Foreign Affairs, was assigned to take care of the bribe money in possession of the Flemish SP (now SP-a; the name change being a direct result of the Agusta scandal) felt he couldn’t do anything but… burn the money. And when questioned in court, he maintained he �?didn’t know it was illegal to burn money’. As punishment, he got sent away to study in Oxford and later returned as minister in the last two administrations. We have a great sense for justice, don’t we?

The Dioxined Chickens and the Fall of the Christian Democrats

January 1999, six months before national elections. The Christian Democrats of the CVP have been in power for over 50 years. Nothing indicates at this time that this will change any time soon. Prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene is a rough and tough politician and is set to lead the party to another victory.

But then, an animal fat processing company, Verkest, mixes animal fat with motor oil and the dioxin in it. This animal fat is used to feed other animals, mostly chickens. A few months down the line, a decline in egg laying and an increased death of chickens is noticed by food controlling agencies. So you’d think the involved ministers (of Agriculture and Public Health) would get the chooks out of the food chain, but while they did that, they also decide to cover up the mass scale of the crisis, until Flemish public TV station, VRT (no, not a garden, but Vlaamse Radio en Televisiemaatschappij – Flemish Radio and Television Broadcasting Company) brings it to light.
The involved ministers have to resign and since the whole scandal broke out right in the final election campaign weeks and people being tired of the long standing Stalinist reign of the Christian Democrats, it is the final blow for the party. They lose big time and in doing so paved the way for eight years of Liberal – Socialist government, which reign ended about a month ago and the now reformed and transformed CD&V is currently leading the formation talks for our new government…

Interesting detail : A guy with the surname Dehaene (translated : The Rooster) loses an election over a roost of poisoned chickens. Sometimes life can be so poetically just…

Dr. ARF

LESSON III : THE MONARCHY

Yet another Arfastic guest-post 😀

Belgian Royal Couple: King Albert II. and Queen Paola. Pengovsky’s been to their crib 🙂
SO WHAT WAS IT?

It was an attempt of our neighbouring countries to have a king on the throne with ties to just about everyone of them, so as they would be guaranteed to have a friendly nation and retain their favourite battlefield. Little did they know that over time, the power of the royal family would dissipate and become all but non- existent…

WHAT IS IT NOW?

It used to be a powerful monarchy, just like everywhere else in the 19th century. But just like everywhere else, the nobility got overtaken by capitalist wealth and the introduction of democracy. And after WWII, the King Issue arose and that was kind of the start of a slow, fatal blow to the Belgian monarchy, which has become the head of state only in name, with an ever increasing number of voices on Flemish side to restrict the king’s role to merely ceremonial. And if you know who’s to come, that would not be such a bad idea in my opinion. But then, I am a republican by nature (not the American kind; the kind that opposes monarchist rule)…

A SHORT RECAP OF BELGIAN ROYAL HISTORY

… Is not on the menu today because, frankly, while it has some political significance, I would like to stick to what I know best about them and leave the rest to Wikipedia, where you can read all about the monarchs up to and including the ones I’ll address today. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of subject matter there which could translate well into a historical royal soap opera. But it would just take me too long and I’d probably bore the death out of you anyway…

WHEN KING BAUDOUIN DESCENDED FROM HEAVEN

When young Baudouin (Boudewijn in Dutch) rose to the throne, he had a lot of public sympathy. After all, he lost his mum in a car accident and had to put up with – allegedly – a wicked stepmother who was rumoured to be after his cherry; a capital sin in the then very catholic Belgium. And he lost the Congo Colony, established by his great- grand uncle king Leopold II (whose bloody reign of terror decimated the Congolese populace after he established it as a colony). He got even more sympathy when he married the Spanish Fabiola de Mora y Aragon. A Spanish beauty for sure, but unfortunately also even more catholic than the pope. Still, after several miscarriages, the people loved and supported them, even though it was clear that religion had instilled some sort of messianic complex in him. Later evidence about talks between him and the dignitaries of those days clearly show that. Imagine that : Jesus came back in the shape of Belgian king Baudouin… I don’t think so.

But times change. And Belgium became less and less devout. And Baudouin became more of a fanatic catholic, letting Opus Dei and the Charismatic Movement into the Royal Court, largely due to Fabby. Also, he decided not to sign the Abortion Act in April 1990, allowing abortion under some circumstances, saying that it went against his conscience. The prime minister of that time, Wilfried Martens, had to perform a trick by declaring the king �?unfit to rule’ for one day so parliament could sign the act to make it law. So our king was declared insane for a day. That’s Belgium for ya…

And what to say about the persistent rumour that after he let Congo have its independence, he knew of and agreed with the arrest and assassination of Congo’s Communist leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961? All this surfaced after he died, though, long after the facts.

Nevertheless, Baudouin still garnered a lot of support from the people, because he showed interest in them and always was the first to arrive after natural or other disasters had stricken a portion of Belgium’s populace. When he died on the last day of July ’93, it caused a mass reaction and people queued up at the palace for a week to greet his dead body. He was the last king that kind of kept Belgium together.

AFTER BAUDOUIN

Some sort of crisis emerged after Baudouin died. His brother Albert’s eldest son, Filip, was originally destined to become king, but was found unfit for the job. So his dad, who up till then had led a life of leisure, parties, mistresses and fast cars and motor cycles, grudgingly took to the throne, kind of like Emperor Claudius who was also a victim of circumstance (although Baudouin was anything but a Caligula :P). There’s not a lot to say about Albert, other than he is somewhat invisible, which is fine to most Belgians. That and the fact that in back in the day, he married the very hot Italian princess Paola Rufo di Calabria. She’s rumoured to have had her fair share of affairs when her hubby was doing the same, and given her looks back in the day, you can’t blame her. One of Albert’s sidesteps brought forth an illegitimate daughter : Delphine Boël. When this became public knowledge (it had been known for a while but never said out loud) the public outrage was more about him not acknowledging his daughter than having her in the first place. But The Palace won’t hear of it, to this day and to the dismay of poor Delphine.

And the royal women are a feisty bunch too, to say the least. Baudouin’s step mother, princess Liliane, couldn’t stand Fabiola and the dislike was mutual, so when Fabby became queen, she gave Liliane her marching orders, together with former king Leopold (who had to abdicate because of his dubious attitude during WW II in favour of Baudouin in 1950; the so called �?King Issue’).
Fabby didn’t like any of the other women either, as she was at odds with Dolce Paola. Guess what happened when Paola became queen? You got it : Fabby got the boot herself and aside of her religious fervor, is nowadays mostly recognized for her absurd hair style and choice in hats (she’s the one on the right). Oh, and she used to write fairy tales too (no surprise there :P)…

There is a lot more to say about his sons, Filip and Laurent, though. Compared to Filip, Prince Charles is a jovial chap. Filip walks, talks and acts like he has a rod up his rectum and is equally convinced that he – and I quote – �?is on a mission (from God)’. He got that idea in the aforementioned Charismatic Movement and from his uncle and aunt, key supporters of the CM within the palace. Also, the future king is supposed to remain neutral about everything involving politics, but since he feels he IS on a mission, he repeatedly has spoken out in favor of or against policies and even political parties. His latest blunder was at the Palace’s new year reception for the press, where he summoned two editors in chief and read them the riot act about their critical views on him. A famous stand up comedian has made a living just by chronicling the acts of stupidity of both Filip and his little brother year after year. Best known quote of Filip, after his first daughter was born : �?It’s a female’ (instead of �?It’s a girl’). Filip doesn’t speak Dutch very well, you see. Another reason why no one up North wants him to be king. He’s also rumoured to be gay and his kids being the product of artificial insemination. Whether or not that’s true can’t be determined at this time. It’s most likely a wild rumour, if you ask me. Sure, he has a rod up his butt, but that doesn’t mean squat in these days of sexual liberty, now does it? 😉 Incidentally, he shares his birthday with… me. Oh, the joy! 😈 Luckily, that’s where all similarities end…

And the prime beef of the family has to be Laurent. Everyone seems to be kind of moving between pity and ridicule when it comes to Laurent. Pity, because he’s always been the wild child, is not very intelligent and is clearly not liked by the rest of the family members. The late king Baudouin is rumoured to have sanctioned an abortion for one of Laurent’s girlfriends, after having gotten the blessing of Belgium’s cardinal Danneels, and he had a law passed that enabled women to become throne successors, in order to prevent Laurent from ever having a chance at the throne (his sister Astrid is now third in line, Laurent’s now 11th).

He lives a rebellious life, had several affairs, one of which was reportedly with the aging Natalija Verboten of Belgium, Wendy van Wanten (trust me, you DON’T want to know what her name stands for), who gave birth to a son by the name of Clément.
He loves fast and gas- guzzling cars, but at the same time has a foundation that �?studies’ ecological projects. However, this is only a construction to keep him occupied, installed by one of the previous governments.
Recently, he was named and summoned in a corruption scandal in the Belgian Navy, where the Navy had �?donated’ their money to the restauration of Laurent’s Villa Clémentine (daughter of king Leopold II, also much a rebel) and to his foundation. Laurent testified and said he knew nothing about the money. An enraged Albert then paid back to the Navy what Laurent supposedly owed him.

Laurent also complained that he �?was poor and didn’t have succifient funds to live on and support his family’ (he’s married to Claire Coombs, daughter of an English father and a Belgian mother and has one daughter and twin sons).
He’s also the royal with at least a – questionable – sense of humor, but you’d have to at least know Dutch rather well in order to get his jokes. He’s been interviewed drunk, dressed up as Santa Claus and at festivals (which he called �?sports’). His interest in beautiful women is also highly documented. And his love for dogs is a point of ridicule for the whole nation.

Nevertheless, when the Dutroux affair happened, he was the only royal who stopped his car when an angry mob was outside the Palace of Justice and tried to talk to them in order to get them to calm down. And he bravely took some insults (�?Why don’t you go and write another book about doggies!’; a reference to him saying he �?wrote a book about doggies’. No, they really don’t speak Dutch all that well in the royal family). Laurent is a controversial guy, but if there still exists some sympathy for the royals in the Belgian populace, I think it lies largely with him.

So there you have it : sex, no drugs (that I know of, although… Looking at Filip, he must be on a permanent high :twisted:) more sex, religion, even more sex and more religion and a bit of rock �?n roll at the end. That’s the Belgian monarchy for you. I don’t mind them existing, but I feel the institution is outdated and absorbs too much of our national budget. If we have to work for a living, why shouldn’t they? But chances are that the institution will become ceremonial, largely because Filip is viewed as a liability for the Belgian reputation. So we’ll see about that in a few years. At times, their antics are highly entertaining, but mostly they exist in a different dimension, far removed from the real life you and I live in. Vive la république!!
Next week my post will coincide with the Belgian National Holiday. High time for some scandals, methinks… 😉

P.S. : Now I’m thinking of it : at the end of this guest series, I’d like to answer some questions you might have about all this. I’m very busy right now, so I don’t always have the time to answer right after posting. So perhaps you can think of some questions, I’ll provide you with an email address at the end of this series and I’ll pick 20 to answer. How about it?

Another damn fine guest-post brought to you by ARF!
LESSON II : THE FLEMING vs. WALLOON THING

Part Two : The Walloons

Walloon flag. I’d say the cock is a dead giveaway 😀

SO WHAT WAS HAPPENING WITH THE WALLOONS?

In last week’s post, I talked about the steady rise of the Flemish region as the main political and economical power in Belgium. The tale of the Walloons is the opposite : a steady decline from the top to the bottom. But at the end of the tale, there’s hope…

HOW DID IT START?

While Flemish emancipation did rise steadily over the course of the 20th century, the Walloons and their francophone allies in Flanders didn’t just roll over and die, of course. For a long while, they were still an economical and hence political force to be reckoned with, as most of the coal and steel industry was situated in the South. Unfortunately for them, coal mining became highly unprofitable with the rise of newer and cleaner means of warming homes and providing electricity from the 1950’s onward. It’s safe to say the decline of coal mining went hand in hand with the post WW II economic boom.
At the same time, steel was manufactured cheaper elsewhere on the globe and thus the stage was set for an economical backlash the size of the former Soviet Union. Workers were laid off, strikes popped up like fires in a dry forest and blazed through the entire Wallonian region. It hit the Flemish as well, because a portion of the work force and some subsidiary industries hailed from there and shared the hard knocks. Remember, this happened when Belgium wasn’t a federal state yet, so all state owned industries (coal and steel, well, whaddayaknow!) suffered likewise. But while Flanders could boast newer economies and a larger work force, Wallonia largely depended on these industries for income. And now it was largely gone – there are still a few steel factories open to this day – so a new source of income had to be found…

FLEMISH �?SOLIDARITY’

Since Belgium was still united, it was easy for the Wallonian politicians to slush Flemish money across the language border in order to keep the dwindling economy from, erm, dwindling even further. You wouldn’t believe the constructions that were dreamed up. Take this example, for instance :
The Flemish part of what was then still the Brabant province – now it’s divided into Vlaams- Brabant and Brabant Wallon – derives its water from several rivers. Of course, you need to get this water treated in order to make it potable. The water purifying station is in Wallonia. So what does the Wallonian intercommunal (the political organ in charge of water) do? They charge their Flemish counterparts for water rights and at the same time charged them again for having the water treated at their stations. Double whammy.
One more? Some time ago, when we had national elections, there was a vacant Flemish position in the Brussels government. This was settled in agreements long ago, so it was legal. But the francophones in the Brussels government out right refused to let a Fleming have that post. It took a month of talking and arguments before they relinquished – for the small sum of two billion Belgian Francs (roughly 500 million euro’s) in aid for Wallonia.

It is, as you can imagine after reading just these two examples, no wonder the Flemish look to their Wallonian counterparts as lazy. In the fifty- odd years of their economical decline, they rather relied on Flemish �?solidarity’ (that’s what their government calls it) to let most of Wallonia retain their social security benefits (which are higher than in Flanders and less prone to sanctions) than to take that money and rebuild and invest in new economies for their region. Only now, when it becomes more and more evident that Flanders is not going to allow these money streams to cross over as plentifully as they once were and the need for further federalization of some national departments like eg. health care (and hence even less money for the Wallonian divisions, since there are less of them and more of us) which was a hot item on the agenda of the winning Flemish parties in last June’s national election has our Wallonian brethren scared faecesless.

WALLONIAN POLIT(R)IC(K)S

I’ll limit myself to the short facts here and perhaps post later about the largest political scandals this country has seen on both sides of the language border.
While the Flemish political parties have had their day in court about the same time as the 70+ year reign of the christian democrats – and thus the clientelism and favoritism that went hand in hand with being in power for such a long time – came to an end in the 90’s in a wash of scandals (one Flemish socialist minister was even smart enough to burn the bribe money his party was given), their Wallonian colleagues sat back and laughed. The socialists laughed the hardest. Wallonia always was a bastion of socialist power, due to the aforementioned factories and heavy industry there. The reign of the Wallonian Parti Socialiste was largely absolute up until recent years. One of their ministers even managed to have one of his in- party adversaries assassinated by Italian mafia supplied hired killers from Algeria. I kid you not. It took more than fifteen years to solve this crime and when it became apparent Mr. Alain Vanderbiest (notice the Flemish surname) was fingered as the brain of the operation, he hanged himself. But the party was – and still is – so hierarchic that the top would have known about this. They all got away. Most of the scandals coming to the surface over the years involved the PS. Again, clientelism and favoritism running rampant, hand in hand with dubious connections with certain Italian, erm, �?families’ and an almost absolute reign of power in the whole region which allowed them to �?network’, made them untouchable. Until now.

The last two years it has become so apparent how much the PS abuses its long standing power, that even the whole Wallonian city of Charleroi (known by frequent Ryanair passengers as �?Brussels South’, when it is, in fact, nowhere near Brussels) is without council today, because everyone has been fired and a lot of dignitaries are in jail on corruption charges. I won’t even attempt to chart all the webs of corruption in the PS �?capital’ of Liège, for they are legion.

And this is the good news : now that these scandals are surfacing and everyone is getting tired of the stranglehold the PS has on Wallonian and Belgian political affairs, our Southern francophone brethren and sisters can start wiping the slate clean (to a certain extent. It IS polit(r)i(c(k)s, after all). And becoming more and more deprived of Flemish �?solidarity’ money has finally lit a fire under the Wallonian government’s… bottom and helped them to realize they have to revamp their economy before they truly become a third world region within the EU. I certainly hope there will be money put into the poorest area of them all : Le Borinage. I seldom come there, but every time I do, it is depressing. A desolate landscape where you can literally see and feel the unemployment and despair. I suppose Goths would call it Paradise. 😈 The countryside is beautiful, but the air of desperation looming from the run down houses and abandoned factories scattered across the landscape makes you intensely sad. When on route to Paris from Brussels, wear a blindfold until after you’ve crossed the French border…

FLEMISH ACCORDING THE THE WALLOONS

Instead of summing up some commonplace clichés, I would like to illustrate how the Walloons perceive us and and how far removed we are from each other right now by telling this true story:

One Wednesday night – 2007 was still young – the Wallionian national broadcasting company RTBF interrupted regular broadcasting for a breaking news flash. The report said that Flanders had seceded from Wallonia and Belgium had ceased to exist. King Albert II had left the country, public transport stopped at the language border and they even showed a Wallonian police patrol racing away from their post to guard the language border. Reports about Flemings celebrating in the streets, Flemish nationalist politicians who were filmed while having a copious dinner and smilingly debating separation… You name it, they showed it.

But is was a farce. It was a mockumentary, made by a journalist who said he wanted to show how removed both regions were from each other. Little did he know what kind of consternation his little exercise generated. RTBF’s phone switch board overloaded, people took to the streets in panic and disbelief, were seen crying and only after half an hour of chaos RTBF found it necessary to show a ticker saying that the news report was fiction. And all the while, Flemings sat in their living rooms and watched Champions League Football, unaware of the whole thing.
The next day, heated debates ensued. Between Flemish and Wallonian politicians, between Flemish politicians and RTBF, the journalist was threatened with legal action, journalistic integrity was questioned. In one word : more chaos. One thing became apparent : as a people, the Wallonians have become as oblivious about their Flemish countrymen- and women as the latter about them. They think we are all separatists. And they all think that the Vlaams Belang party has something to do with it. While a portion of that is true, it is also the Wallonians’ continuous refusal to become bilingual and show at least an interest in Flanders as a culture that led to this. The belief that they don’t need to speak Flemish while in this region because we used to accommodate them by doing so is so etched in their collective consciousness that it accounts for a lot of sour grapes. And now the Flemings are starting to do the same.

Conclusion : there is hope for Wallonia, as I said a couple of paragraphs up. But Belgium is only a hair away from becoming past history. And I’m not really sure if that would be to the benefit of either region…
Next week, Dr. ARF will tackle the Belgian Monarchy. One needs a laugh after this serious subject… 😛

Another excellent guest post by ARF. Enjoy!
LESSON II : THE FLEMING vs. WALLOON THING

Part One : The Flemish

The flag of Flanders. No relation to Ned Flanders of the Simpsons and very much alike the Panther of Karantania

WHAT THE HELL IS IT?

It’s NOT Monty Python’s Flying Circus, although the opposing attitudes might win a prize for major silliness. What is it then? Well, it’s the opposition of two cultures who were put together because of the founding of what is now our father- or motherland. Yet both factions seem more like orphans put together in the same household without each other’s consent. I’m afraid the matter is so complex I have to split it up and deal with it in a few posts. I’ll deal with the Flemings first…
HOW DID IT START?

As I explained in my first guest post, it all started when Belgium was conceived and, in short, our French speaking brethren were lumped in with us Flemings and had control over the government and economy. Consequently, they looked down on the Flemish as being uneducated and unsophisticated boorish louts, only to be used to squeeze for their farming produce and cheap labour in Walloon- controlled factories and mines and be intimidated by the French speaking clergy, since this country used to be the epicenter of Catholicism (thank, erm, god we’ve got all that behind us now)…

Hang on a second : before I go on, I should make something clear. I’m not angry at my Walloon brethren and sisters. Alas, history forces me to give evidence of their less than desirable attitude towards Flemings in a space of roughly 150 years. And, as you’ll come to see, a role reversal has taken place over the past 187 years. So with that out of the way, let’s move on…

Francophone culture dominated Belgium from the start and the official language was French. So were there no Flemings in control? Oh yes there were. But they did their best to forget all about their Flemish heritage. And that wasn’t a novelty. I spoke of the Flemish National Holiday briefly last week : on July 11th 1302 The Battle of the Golden Spurs was fought. Basically, an army of Flemish knights, soldiers, trade guilds and whoever could wield a weapon defeated an army of French soldiers, noblemen and their allies, even though they were outnumbered 2 to 1. Fighting with the French were the Flemish collaborators, called �?Liliards’, because they had sworn allegiance to the French flag, which then sported a lily. The Flemish partisans were called �?Clawards, because their symbol was the Flemish Lion. You can bet your sweet Slovene bottom that these collaborators were sought out and paid for their service to the occupying French with their lives in very painful and lengthy ways.

You can imagine Flemings consorting with yet another band of French speaking individuals at the expense of their own heritage didn’t fall all to well in the 19th century either. And while the times they have a- changed, you can still find blue-haired old ladies of the almost extinct bourgeoisie rank in my home town Leuven who address each other in French, much to the dismay of present day Lovanians, especially those who fought for the Flemification of the Leuven University in the 60’s. That in itself is worth a post, but then this guest post thing would take up more than ten lessons and not be easy… 😛

THE ONE MAN LITERARY FLEMISH ARMY TO THE RESCUE

So while the Walloons and their new batch of Liliards were in power, things seemed pretty bleak for the Flemings. An expression which illustrates this has survived to this day. Whenever the officers in the Belgian army explained something or gave orders, they did so in French and added ”Et pour les Flamands la même chose” (“And the same goes for the Flemings”).

By all counts, you should think we’d be feeling pretty bad about ourselves. After all, you’re being treated as a second class citizen on a daily basis. And yes, we developed a victim complex roughly the size of the former Soviet Union, which later turned into a typical Belgian syndrome. “We’re just lowly Belgians and basically, we’re sorry we are. Please forgive us, we can’t help being born here”. Well, thanks to people like Kim Clijsters, Justine Henin, Tia Hellebaut and Kim Gevaert (tennis, tennis, World Champion High Jump, European Champion 100 & 200m Dash) we only have our national football team to be ashamed of. 😀 I told you we had a lot in common, didn’t I?

But long before our sporty women, one man wouldn’t let all this slide and he attempted to reconnect the Fleming with his Flemish identity. His name was Hendrik Conscience and he is now known as �?The Man Who Taught His People To Read’. He wrote his novels in a very baroque style of Dutch with heavy Flemish overtones (Flemish is a variant of Nizozemsko) in a time when you were guaranteed to be ousted for doing something inflammatory like that. Nevertheless, Conscience stuck to his guns and is revered for it to this day. Not quite France Preseren, but there are, once again, similarities : two writers, both revered for giving their countrymen a sense of identity. Personally, I think his writing is kind of pompous, but it did the trick back then, I suppose. I would have preferred a poet who’d give us a drinking song for a national anthem, though…

FLEMISH IDENTITY

It’s not the easiest of subjects to write about, because Flemish emancipation only started happening inbetween the two World Wars and went on for long after that. And it’s still going on. Some say it won’t end until Flanders de facto separates from Wallonia; something which causes nightmares down South. But more on that next week…

This empancipation is responsible for a rift within the Flemish community as well, as some of those who historically opposed the founding of Belgium from one generation to the next and either wanted to remain with the Dutch or have an independent Flemish state felt that their future lay with the Nazis during WW II and collaborated willingly, thinking Hitler would grant them the status of allied free state within the Third Reich, purely on cultural kinship. There even was a separate SS brigade fighting on the Eastern Front, the Langemark Brigade. Needless to say, these people were misled and all they got to show for when the war was over was defeat, disdain, imprisonment and their civil rights taken away for several years. Not that many of them minded the latter consequence, since they didn’t want to be Belgian anyway.

Some of the collaborators and their offspring would later found a political nationalist party, the Volksunie, which weighed heavily on Belgian politics and around the end of the 70’s gave birth to the Vlaams Blok (Flemish Block), whose founder, the now late Karel Dillen (The Man Who Could Look Around A Corner With One Eye While Looking Back With The Other; not in the least related to Bob Dylan) felt the VU wasn’t extreme enough. Well, denying the Holocaust and glorifying Nazi Germany was second nature to this man and it is no wonder that what is now called Vlaams Belang (Flemish Importance/Interest) is thé party whose programme is directed against – mostly Arab – foreigners, gays, lesbians and bi’s, intellectuals and artists, calls for an independent Flanders most vehemently and basically wants to turn Flanders into a police state.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? Dear ol’ Adolf would’ve loved it back in the day. Unfortunately, it made sure that Flemish symbols like our regional flag are being looked at as being separatist and racist, because Vlaams Belang hijacked them. Doesn’t make things any easier, I tell you. Show your pride about your cultural heritage and even your own people might label you a party member – it’s become a standard insult to call someone �?Vlaams Belanger’ – with all the negative adjectives it entails. Much to the delight of the party itself, for which this fencing in is an electoral godsend…

Nevertheless, the Flemish identity rose to the foreground from a more civilized standpoint from the 60’s – even though we did have our fair share of rioting – and that hard working ethic and that out right stubbornness of ours made sure that by the 70’s Flemings were a force to be reckoned with. While the political parties back then were still bilingual and thus bicultural – federalization in the beginning of the 80’s split the parties into Flemish and Walloon counterparts, the Flemish politicians gradually took over, because by sheer population demographics, they had the highest voter percentages and thus got to deliver the prime ministers. Of the 10- odd million Belgians there are 58% Flemings and 38% Walloons. This has left the latter outnumbered and outgunned every time for about thirty years now. They are really up for moving a Wallonian prime minister into the Wetstraat 16 again (our No.10 Downing Street) but alas, unless a strong case of bird flu or The Black Plague eradicates 50% of all the Flemings and doesn’t hit Wallonia, this isn’t likely to happen any time soon.

WALLOONS ACCORDING THE THE FLEMISH

To finish off, I’ll sum up some commonplace clichés which show how Flemings think about their Walloon brethren and sisters :

-They’re lazy and live on welfare, paid for by �?us’ (the rich Flanders region and specifically we, the tax payers. While these are generalizations, there is some truth in this statement, but to explain it in detail would take me forever and bore the hell out of y’all).

-They outright refuse to learn or speak Dutch/Flemish (sad but true; Flemings still speak French in a lager percentage and will try to accommodate the Walloons even by speaking French to them in Flanders, although this is starting to change).

-Their politicians are more corrupt than ours (not likely; Flemish politicians cleaned up their act much earlier and Wallonian scandals are only now getting out; that’s all).

Up next week : The Walloons…