What should happen next after the dismissal of formateur Bart De Wever (N-VA)? Arizona isn’t finished yet.
“Certainly not,” said N-VA negotiator Theo Francken last Sunday when he was asked whether it was over for ‘Arizona’. But it won’t be easy. On Monday afternoon, formateur Bart De Wever resigned for the second time. The king will keep that dismissal under consideration until next Tuesday. For those looking for a glimmer of hope, that’s quite a long time.
‘Arizona’ is the name for the coalition that has been the most obvious since election night: N-VA, Vooruit, CD&V, MR and Les Engagés. That combination has a large majority of 82 seats out of 150. It also groups a number of major winners of the elections. And it meets a compelling and widely supported demand in the north and south of the country: both the extreme left (plus 3 seats) and the extreme right (plus 2 seats) remain outside the government. Shortly after the elections, all parties appeared to really be interested in it.
Although the N-VA lost a seat in the federal parliament on June 9, it remained the largest party in the country with 24 seats. It was only logical that that party would take the initiative for the next government, and that is what happened. N-VA chairman Bart De Wever seemed to realize that he should become prime minister of Arizona. The Flemish nationalist De Wever himself never showed his enthusiasm, to say the least, but he did explicitly go for the job. The N-VA wants to be in the driver’s seat again.
Vooruit also scored well. With four additional seats in parliament, it is defensible for President Conner Rousseau to join the government, although an otherwise center-right alliance was not ideal for him from the start. Rousseau wants a strong capital gains tax for the large wealth, he also wants multinationals to contribute more, and he wants to keep cutting social security as painless as possible. The right-wing parties in Arizona are much less interested in this – or even not at all.
That Rousseau is now not taking responsibility is nonsense. Vooruit also has to think about its voters. If the content spread is too great, it will not work. It is true that De Wever’s second failure could make Vooruit’s supporters and voters think twice. Is the starting position really that bad for Rousseau, in times when Europe and voters think we should make cuts? And above all: is left-wing Flanders convinced that things will be better without Conner Rousseau at the table?
Nobody wants a tripartite, or even worse: a new edition of Vivaldi.
CD&V, like the N-VA, lost one seat in the elections and is also much smaller, but as a center party the Christian Democrats seemed to be able to take on the role of binding agent. Just like in the old days, albeit a bit in a minor key.
On the French-speaking side, the alliance was even more self-evident. The spot in the middle of the bed is also a favorite spot of Les Engagés by chairman Maxime Prévot. The CD&V counterpart also did extremely well on June 9 (plus nine seats). And then there is the other big winner of the elections, Georges-Louis Bouchez, who led his MR to a gain of six seats, ending up with twenty seats. That is a great starting position for Bouchez, but also one in which he is prepared to make few compromises.
What should happen next? A flamingo who has to become Prime Minister of Belgium, a socialist who has to cut deep into social security and a liberal who is so crazy about glory that even the slightest concession seems an unacceptable shame: anyone who thinks about it carefully realizes that ‘Arizona’ never was an obvious combination. But there are few other options. Nobody wants a tripartite (red, blue and orange) or even worse: a new edition of Vivaldi. A replacement of the MR by the PS also seems like political science fiction today.
After this crisis, things can go in any direction, but at the same time Arizona remains the most logical combination. An exchange between Bouchez and Rousseau, with each taking home a few trophies: that is the way to break the stalemate. The water is deep, that has been clear for almost five months now. But is it really too deep?
