Do you mean by this that you are not opposed to the very principle of bringing party presidents into the government?
That’s right, I’m not opposed to it. The reality in Belgium is the significant weight of party presidents. We can deplore it, but it is the political reality of the country. And a strong team is one where the real decision-making power is assigned to those at the table. This is also the case in other political regimes. In Great Britain, for example, it is the head of the party in power who becomes Prime Minister. In Canada, Justin Trudeau resigns and what does he announce? That he will resign as Prime Minister when he is replaced as leader of his party (Liberal Party of Canada, Editor’s note). It is therefore not incongruous. So, one could say that it makes more sense when there is only one party in power? Not necessarily, precisely, because the decision-making process is even more complicated when there are several.
Where have the statesmen gone in Belgium?
However, I would have one reservation: if party presidents become ministers, then there is no longer any recourse to “mothers-in-law”. However, we know that when there is a knot within the executive, it is not useless to take a little fresh air and return to discuss the government agreement with the fathers and mothers.
Some fear that this formula (the combination of the functions of party president and minister) will prevent parliament from playing its role of counter-power. What do you think?
This doesn’t make sense, we shouldn’t confuse everything. But strictly speaking, we are putting our finger on something – which is a disease of governance – and that is the party-opposition. It’s so much easier when the party president is not in charge. And Georges-Louis Bouchez, the author of this proposal, actively did so during Vivaldi. This creates ironic paradoxes in Belgian political life. The president of the MR is on this point exactly in line with Ecolo since the 2000s: we are in power, but we are not really there. We are in power, but we contest. We are in power, but we are taking the opposite view. All this weakens government action because it is not real opposition work. Opposition work belongs to parliament, to the opposition, it does not belong to the majority. And if there is a majority problem, it is then up to the parliamentary group of the majority to make it heard. In any case, the formula proposed here by Bouchez is perhaps not the best but should not be rejected straight away. The idea – especially in a complicated budgetary period – is not absurd, particularly to limit sterile debates.
