“I love Brussels. I love Brussels, absolutely. That’s why it hurts me so much to see the city bleeding”indicated Theo Francken when the point concerned the violence perpetrated in Brussels during the night of New Year’s Eve.
After the response from the Minister of the Interior, Annelies Verlinden (CD&V), Ridouane Chahid responded: “We must stop stigmatizing Brussels. I want to tell Mr. Francken that it’s not that he doesn’t like Brussels, he doesn’t like a part of Brussels, that’s the reality.”
Theo Francken’s response was not long in coming. A response that the House services preferred not to transcribe in their report. “I have no lessons to learn. On the other hand, it is true that I have a problem with a party in Brussels and it is the PS.”
Brussels blockade
“This is one of the reasons why the PS does not want to govern with the N-VA”commented Ridouane Chahid after leaving the committee.
It has now been seven months since part of the Brussels political world has been trying to form a government for the Belgian capital. On the Flemish side, the four parties (Groen, Open VLD, Vooruit and N-VA) are ready to go, but on the French-speaking side, the negotiations are at a standstill because the PS refuses to start them. Reason? The French-speaking socialists do not want not that the N-VA finds itself in the Brussels executive.
Rachid Madrane opposes Ahmed Laaouej’s position: “There should be no taboo in working with the N-VA in a Brussels government”
Between Flemish nationalists and Brussels socialists, tensions are increasing week after week. The breaking point arrived in the wake of the revelations about the Anderlecht CPAS, a period when the Socialist Party was regularly portrayed among its political opponents as a mafia-like, communitarian and clientelist formation.
At the end of November, in the program “De afspraak op vrijdag” made a statement which, in the eyes of the boss of the Brussels PS Ahmed Laaouej, was unacceptable. “Many people do not go to vote in Brussels because their minds are elsewhere, in their country of origin. And when they go to vote, they very often do what the imam says,” indicated the former Secretary of State.
“This spit thrown in the face of thousands of Brussels residents recalls the nature of this separatist party, anti-Francophone and prone to racist ideas”the Brussels elected official was indignant.
Since then, the PS has refused to return to the negotiating table as long as the N-VA is in the equation. On Tuesday, the former president of the Brussels parliament Rachid Madrane called on his party to review its position and agree to at least sit at the negotiating table. This muscular exchange between MPs Francken and Chahid shows that this stage is far from being reached.
