Ok Dutchies, I'm gonna hijack this threat.
Tomorrow we'll have Belgian federal elections. The Dutch might have needed to vote for 4 elections past 8 years, the Belgian government has fallen 4 times last 3 years, and Yves Leterme (CDnV) has resigned to the King 5 times.
I will try to explain how Belgian elections work, since they are not as straight forward as that of most other nations.
In Belgium we have four main governments (and a bunch of small crap to) consisting out of :
*Flemish parliament (authority restricted to Flanders)
*Walloon parliament (" Wallonia )
*Brussels parliament (For Brussels and closeby towns)
*Federal parliament (our national government)
each one has it's own ministers, and leaders : minister presidents for the communities (3) and the prime minister as national representative. Not all governments have the same authorities, although the communities have allot of posts that are available nation wide to.
for instance, the federal government is the only government which has a minister of justice. But each government has for instance a minister of finance AND a secretary for fraud(6 com, 2fed). I think each have about 10 ppl working with them, so that's about 80 for the nation.
And ofcource a lot of flaming for who can do what.
This goes on for every post of the government but some thing go only for the community (for instance education) others go only for federal (social security, pensions, defence, homeland sec,...), others are shared (housing, environment,mobility, agriculture,...
So in Belgium, many ministers have the same sort of authority ( and each community has it's own minister for the subject) , so we get 4 ministers on the same subject in our nation although only one nation wide.
Now the federal government consists out of parts : chamber and senate. Only the chambers is important, senate always follows(There are rumours some politicians want to abolish the senate)
The federal government ... is a big mess. In Belgium, your only allowed to vote on parties of your community to go federal, except BHV, which can vote both (I'll try to explain that mess l8)
So flemish are only allowed to vote flemish, walloons only on walloons. personaly, I believe I should have the right to vote for a walloon party, if I believe it is the better one. Right now I don't.
And this creates No 1 of Belgiums problems: parties are only focused of what they can do for their community, and not for the NATION !
this is the current government
Nice and colourful isn't it ? In Belgium we need at least 5 parties each government. This usually means Flemish + Walloon counterpart
We have
CDnV (F Christian demo)
CDH ( W "")
open VLD (F Liberals)
MR (W "")
SP.A(F socialist)
PS ( W "")
GROEN ! (F Eco-nazi's)
Ecolo (W"")
VB( Vlaams belang, far right wing)
NVA(Niewe Vlaamse aliantie , right wing with seperatistic ambitions)
FDF(walloon right wing anti Flanders party, in coalition with MR)
Current polls suggest that NVA will get from 5(2006) to 25%, CDnV will get hits VLD a slight slap as well.
The current government consists of CdnV, VLD, MR,FDF, CDH and PS.
They have failed beyond believe. They have done 3 years utterly nothing. Leterme has resigned 5 times( CDnV campaign moto was "never give up" , suits them right!)
Migration :
total mess. Indecisive to make either open or closed border policy, they've utterly chosen national amnesty, which means that for 3 months, ppl without papers could automaticly become Belgian citizens if they came and registered.
People are no longer send back either: the government can only ask if they please get back, but can no longer force.
As a result migration centres are far over capacity. Immigrants are currently sheltered in hotels. The migration directors and human activists have sued the state for this and got right: Belgium now has to pay 500 euro per capita per day to immigrants (I had to read this in the paper to believe it ! but if you come from Afghanistan with your wife and 4 children, you'll get about 100 000€ for being in Belgium while you are w8ing the next four years to get regulated !)
Justice : total mess. We need to rent cells in Holland. Most convicted don't even get in jail, since there is no room. There is a waiting list in order to get "allowed" into jail. most just get House arrest, and thus get away cheap. they won't put you in jail if you have to serve less then 2 years.
Pensions: total empty. is being done by this guy :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Dw9GL9Pdc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6icNu70hx9ofeature=relatedAnd then the argument used that they aleast did something last 3 years : "but we did save the banks!"
You mean by selling them cheap to the Dutch and Giving the Belgian part to the Frensh instead of nationalising ? no thanks !
Previous government was bad (they did allot of selling and lendleasing back at ridicules renting prices, the state no longer owns any building aside from the parliament itself ), this one was a
disaster now about BHV:simple version : Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde are a single voting district. However, by language law of 1958 (I think) it states that Halle and Vilvoorde are Flemish. Now these ones have had allot of migration of walloons from Brussels to there, who, as a result, vote for walloons. Now, not a big deal you think ? You're right, the population doesn't care a fuck, but politics do! each vote = 3€(per annum I belive) , and these communities are densely populated. Walloons will vote for wallon parties , so parties are missing lots of funds. They care because Flemish in Wallonia can only vote Walloon, but now Walloons (who mainly migrate to that region) can vote Walloon in flanders, so Flemish parties are missing lots of €€€. And ofcource Walloons Object!
Sorry for the chaotic post.
I tried to reflect Belgian politics in a nutshell, but it is rather complicated to do this online since it's hard to explain how we have a national government, without actually having one.
If you would want to learn more , we should go to the bar and I can give you a 4 hour lecture about it how it all works
I did not go in too deep because that would lead to to mush walls of text
We'll have the results tomorrow !