As I wrote earlier this week, Vlaams Belang was the big winner of last Sunday's federal, regional and European elections. "The big winner" with only 18 per cent of the vote in Flanders? Yes indeed, in a hopelessly fragmented electoral landscape like Belgium's, gaining that much, up from about 6 per cent in 2014, is a game changer. Consider the fact that in Belgium, post elections, it is customary that the King has a short meeting with the respective party chairmen and/or -women. Never before was a VB president among those invited. The party was founded in 1977; in all those years, neither King Baldwin I, King Albert II, or King Philippe I received the Chairman of a political entity which has as its main stated aim the abolition of the Kingdom of Belgium and the independence of Flanders. It is true that in 1978 Baldwin I did invite then Vlaams Blok Chairman Karel Dillen - Vlaams Blok being the predecessor of Vlaams Belang - but that Dillen flatly refused to meet the King. Communautarian tensions were far harsher than now and Flemish rights trampled far more, and Dillen would not have been able to sell such a meeting to his base, even if he had wanted to go.
As the years passed by and Vlaams Belang steadily grew, so did the resistance of the traditional parties against what they regarded as uncouth newcomers. After an earlier major victory by Vlaams Blok in 1991, dubbed 'Black Sunday' by Belgium's extreme leftist media, Jos Geysels, Chairman of the Flemish Greens, masterminded the so-called 'cordon sanitaire', an agreement between all traditional parties to never enter in a coalition with the Flemish nationalists. This isolation only helped to make Vlaams Blok more popular in Flanders, and after a kangaroo court ruled Vlaams Blok 'racist' in 2004, the party had to change its name in Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest). In the same year it captured a staggering 24 per cent of the vote in Flanders, in all likelihood because Flemings have a sympathy for the underdog but also, as always, because VB was the only party having the guts to address the incessant flow of welfare money from rich Flanders to poor Wallonia, eternally in the grip of the hopelessly corrupt Parti Socialiste.
Unfortunately, post 2004 the VB's appeal steadily declined. This had several reasons. First of all voter fatigue, as more and more militants got convinced that their efforts were for nothing since the other parties would forever keep VB in political quarantine. Then internal strife, as several high profile people with less impeccable conservative credentials joined, inevitably giving rise to tensions and petty rivalries. But most of all the emergence of another Flemish nationalist party, N-VA (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie, some kind of Vlaams Belang Lite), which was not subjected to a 'cordon sanitaire'.
It was this party that was a key partner in the federal government Michel I, which was in charge from 2014 until DEC 2018, and which collapsed because N-VA refused to sign the UN Migration Pact. It should be very well remembered that actually, it had every intention to do so. But it was Vlaams Belang which, through a spirited intervention by Filip Dewinter in federal parliament last October, threw the issue on the table, drawing attention to the devastating consequences of 'Marrakesh'. Thereafter, N-VA, its top brass knowing full well that the grand majority of Flemings would never forgive them the signing of the Pact if they ever got to know its contents, made a 180 degree turn and in the blink of an eye became hostile to the idea of sending a delegation to Marrakesh to sign the scam. Things came to a head in early DEC, N-VA stepped out, and a minority government, Michel II, continued.
During last Spring, a serious attempt was made by leftist organizations and all parties to convince the general public that the climate should be the No. 1 issue, not mass migration, but to no avail. As we have seen, last Sunday's elections not only signalled the fact that at least Flemings were not fooled re the real threat to our prosperity and safety, but also that more and more people want the 'cordon sanitaire' gone.
In short, this very undemocratic construction, invented by a petty green tyrant, and maintained by all other parties - who over the years had and have morphed in fifty shades of red, is now cracking. Even though all party bigshots with the exception of N-VA Chairman Bart De Wever started their 'working' week by exclaiming - for the umpteenth time - that they would 'NEVER' cooperate with Vlaams Belang, it is clear that their bases disagree. A staggering 85 per cent of N-VA voters, comfortable majorities of Christian Democratic and liberal ones, and even 40 per cent of the Greens, want the cordon to be shelved. The base knows (far) better than the 'elites' that this monstrosity is undemocratic tout court, but our moral betters still won't listen (yet).
So all of a sudden, it seems that the question is no longer whether the cordon sanitaire will disappear, but when. And as much as our King has annoyed me in the past with his predictable PC stances on a variety of issues, he deserves accolades this week for having shown the guts to grant the Chairman of Vlaams Belang, 32-year old Tom Van Grieken, an audience:
I do not think that the cordon will disappear overnight. Elites can be as stubborn as they are stupid. But that their 28 year old construction is cracking can now no longer be denied. They will now in all likelihood cobble together a freak show of a rainbow coalition and do everything they can to keep VB out, and N-VA will be complicit in this scheme, because its leadership is composed of traitors who promise their base one thing and then proceed to do the exact opposite. Case in point their despicable chairman Bart De Wever, who has been so frantically busy to keep the Right in Flanders divided (an alliance N-VA / VB would be an unbeatable combination) that over the past months I have begun to suspect he is, in fact, a leftist plant.
Continuing to shun the VB will only result in things getting worse (criminality, mass migration and population replacement, islamization), and in time VB will reap the rewards of this. In many towns the party was the biggest one last Sunday, a trend already visible in the municipal elections of last autumn, when support for VB reached very huge scores (40 per cent plus) in towns like Ninove and Liedekerke.
Anyway, Mr Van Grieken had his audience, both this young chairman and the King, it must be said, behaved gentlemanly - call me old fashioned, but I actually like Van Grieken's show of respect by slightly bowing to our sovereign - and the King's gesture in all likelihood is a sign of hope that before long...
... the awful cordon sanitaire will belong to the past.
MFBB.
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