According to the socialist, the new working base is not balanced. It still does not represent a fair distribution of burdens. The head of Vooruit asks to seek 20 billion euros by taxing the assets of the super-rich. To support his request, he would have come with a budgetary table judged “incomprehensible“by several people present at this lunch.”He defended a tax shift to carry out sanitation, but it was not realistic”annoys a negotiator. “He made it a prerequisite for any negotiation. If he is not sure of having certain skills, he will not enter the conclave. But that’s not how things work. It is in negotiations that we obtain progress, not before.”
What does Rousseau want?
The Halloween block falls just days before the trainer’s royal audience. On Monday, Bart De Wever must submit a report to King Philippe on the progress of the negotiations. If nothing has changed by then, the president of the N-VA could resign. It is said that the mayor of Antwerp tried everything to reconcile the different parties. Before the blockage, he increased bilateral consultations. He sought to qualify the proposals to have a starting document on which each party would agree to move forward. Bart De Wever would have even made some concessions to Conner Rousseau by maintaining the possibility of retiring at 60 after a career of 42 years or by promising to raise minimum wages.
But that wasn’t enough. Therefore, four out of five negotiators wonder: “Does Conner Rousseau really want to see socialists in the future federal government?”
Conner Rousseau: “I have to explain to my grandmother that it’s no longer okay to use the ‘n-word,’ but that doesn’t make her a racist”
In the rue de la Loi, morale is at its lowest. Some speak of an impasse, others predict talks that will drag on until Easter. The problem is that there are almost no alternatives. Numerically, the five parties (N-VA, MR, LEs Engagés, Vooruit and CD&V), are condemned to get along. A majority which would bring the PS up would not suit the right and, in any case, their president Paul Magnette wishes to remain in the opposition. “There is no question of going to the federal level”, they confirmed to us on Friday. Another alternative that is circulating is to replace Vooruit with Open VLD. But with 76 seats out of 150, this very weak majority will have all the difficulty in the world to impose itself in the face of a strengthened left-wing opposition which will not let anything pass.
The hope is that socialists will drop some weight for All Souls’ Day so that Arizona will come back to life. But at this point, it seems pretty buried.
