While you guys are all wondering who he is, we in Belgium are wondering who’s going to replace Herman Van Rompuy as our prime minister.
He’s the only prime minister who managed to give Belgium non-chaotic federal politics, for a few months.
I fear that Belgium will now plunge into a new political crisis. Not because the former prime-minister, Yves Leterme, is a bad one, but because the Walloons simply don’t want him. We know they’ll do everything in their power to discredit Yves. Especially their media will. Le Soir already publicly said that they’ll “veto” Yves Leterme as prime minister. As if a newspaper elects ministers. Arrogance.
If the price for delivering the first president of Europe is that we must pay with a new political crisis, I guess that we are so used to politic crisis that it’s okay. We’ll survive. You guys can have him.
He’s quite intelligent. He’s not a media guy. We don’t know more about him ourselves. Use wikipedia.
The real bad thing about Herman is that in the past he let religion influence his politics. He was for example against abortion laws. And he is against Turkey joining the union because of religious differences.
However. For the people from the United Kingdom: fuck your conservative tabloid magazines. To the idiot editors of those tabloids: discrediting Van Rompuy was easy, still you guys screwed up with retarded articles about Belgium.
ps. I don’t care that you don’t want politics on planet.gnome. It pulls from my blog, so ask the administrators of planet.gnome to pick the right categories. I say this because I know that people will otherwise comment about it. I want them to know that I don’t care.
Philip: if you want Planet GNOME to use a specific category for your feed, tell us which category to use. We can’t know what you want…
Hey Vincent: I leave this to you guys (I know you already know). I have a category for “english” and for “Informatics and programming”. I wouldn’t mind if planet.gnome would use those two categories combined.
I don’t feel responsible for picking the categories for planet.gnome. Other planets make this decision themselves too, and I’m fine with that.
If planet.gnome wants to be a “window into the world, work and lives of GNOME hackers and contributors” then I think that for me “english” is the right category (given that planet.gnome apparently has a preference on “english” posts). Politics is part of my world, work and live too.
I also think that this is a good concept for planet.gnome: I wouldn’t prefer a planet.gnome that only touches the technical aspects of what we do & who we are. I have always said that I prefer the way planet.gnome is being done today. I like it the way it is. Jeff’s original idea was and is great.
But it is not my call. Not on an individual basis (for my blog) nor on a global basis (for all people syndicated on planet.gnome). I’m a community member who appreciates and allows planet.gnome picking up any post that I write on my blog.
At least I’m glad it’s not our Dutch prime minister. The guy has only one big talent and that’s saying nothing using an awful lot of words. Having him define the role of EU president would be lethal to the authority of it.
Third blog post in a row I’m reading about the same subject.
Just in case you care (both in Dutch):
Funny:
http://jeanlucdehaene.blogspot.com/2009/11/de-wereld-aan-de-voeten-van-de-scheve.html
From eurosceptics:
http://inflandersfields.eu/2009/11/pieter-cleppe-de-man-die-herman-van.html
The thing that worries me more about him is that he looks insignificant and nobody knows him. This will make more and more people care less about Europe…
Nice post.
I did however want to mention that not all flemish people would be glad to see Leterme come back. I for one was incredibly glad when he finally stopped his efforts and am appalled that he even got to be a minister after that mess. As such, there are few options I wouldnt take before seeing him back as our prime minister.
@Marco: .. or it makes people realistic.
He wont make bold statements. He will play the game of dialogue. He wont be an Obama making statements that can’t be fulfilled even in wild dreams.
He will try to balance world powers like France, United Kingdom and Germany. He will consider the opinion of the smaller countries in Europe too: he’s been prime minister of one, and finance minister of it before that (which imo. is more difficult than being its prime minister).
This is indeed different than the political game being played in the United States.
But then again, Europe is different than the United States. In both culture and politics.
Whether people from the United States understand that, or don’t understand that: The reality is that it’s utterly irrelevant whether they do or don’t. By that I mean: we don’t need a populist media figure like Obama just because the rest of the world thinks we do. Feel free to replace Obama with Blair, and US with UK in that last sentence.
Europe needs actual problems to be solved. Europe doesn’t need *just* promises and bold populist media statements. We simply don’t have time for promises. Reality versus dreaming.
For that you need a doer without ego.
That’s what we Belgians know about Herman: He’s a doer without ego.
“Without ego” is illustrated in one of his speeches about Turkey joining the union:
“Whatever my personal opinion is, my task is to find consensus between the 27 current members of the union”: It’s not about his personal opinion. That’s the entire point.
But we’ll see. Agree about that.
Marco: would you have known Jean-Luc Dehaene or Guy Verhofstadt? Those two Belgian former prime ministers have been pretty active on the European level lately, and have strong (for the UK: unacceptable) pro-European profile, but I doubt many people from other European countries know them well. That’s just the toll Belgium pays for being a small country.
Gert: Here’s another Belgian who fears for yet more political instability in Belgium, especially if Yves Leterme becomes prime minister again. In my opinion, his behaviour in the TV programme “Voor eens en voor altijd” showed that he still has trouble dealing with defeat and with (even clearly unfounded) criticism, and that he cannot talk about it openly.
So yeah, it may be good for Europe and for Herman Van Rompuy, but I fear it will be bad for Belgian internal politics. And I agree with Philip’s sentiment about those British crap newspapers. It’s sad that there are people who are writing and reading such blatant lies.
@Gert: agree that not all Flemish people want to see him return as prime minister. But being a NV-A voter myself (so I’m not by definition necessarily a Yves-fan), I don’t know who else at this moment.
@pvanhoof – You forgot to mention that us Europeans don’t give a crap about presidents dogs :D We care that the management role goes to someone that can manage ;D
As a matter of interest is this an executive presidency or not? They seem to be taking a similar approach to the Irish non-executive presidency.
At least in terms of status.
Yves is a moron, just look at what he did recently with Tunisia…
Anyway, I’m not going to talk to an NV-A voter… Split Belgium now, so that we can get rid of Flanders once for all !
At least Yves Leterme knows how to write a resignation letter. I hope he already prepared his next ;-)
Belgium needs politics like childs needs Bouglione circus. It will be fun again.
Philip, I strongly believe the Planets are made for technical posts and so on, sure, but definitely also for this kind of posts too.
Skipping a post if it gets too political in the first two lines is very easy for readers. Planets are about the lifes and interests of those who are aggregated, not necessarily only about their last superhack on GNOME.
I, for one, would leave your feed as is.
Citation from “le soir”:
Le nom d’Yves Leterme est cité. « Reconnaissons qu’au moment de son départ, on n’a pas eu grand-chose à lui reprocher. On sait maintenant que le dysfonctionnement de Fortis relève d’un dysfonctionnement du monde judiciaire », a commenté Joëlle Milquet.
Quickly translated this means that Joëlle Milquet (nicknamed “Miss No” by Flemish media) says that there were no real reason to not have Yves Leterme as a prime minister anymore, appart from the fact he was involved in the so-called Fortisgate legal affair, whose he was later determined not to have any responsibility afterwards.
This doesn’t really match the way you’re telling Walloon politicians will put a veto to his come back as a prime minister…
Hello Philip,
I’m a Walloon and a pro-Belgium (and pro-Europa). I often disagree with what you say about Belgium and Walloon. Here’sno exception ;-)
Nevertheless, I want to continue to read that on planet.gnome. I find it very interesting and I want to be reminded that we are not only coding machine, we are human with a life and opinions. Some talks about vegan cookies, some about belgian politics, I like them both ;-)
If I don’t want to read non-gnome related stuffs, I will just skip posts obviously non-gnome related in my RSS reader that day.
So please, don’t change your feed :-)
“He’s the only prime minister who managed to give Belgium non-chaotic federal politics, for a few months.”
you, as an N-VA voter could have chosen different wording. He’s the only PM in years that managed to do absolutely nothing for a few months. I say: Johan Sauwens for prime minister!
@mrmcq2u: right (I used the word “doer” instead of “media guy”, for explaining that in a comment above).
@Martijn: Apparently is the only way not to create political chaos, doing nothing. Indeed. Nevertheless, a lot has to be done in Belgium. Else we are simply bankrupt in a few years. I don’t think Herman did nothing. He did reverse the priorities, yes: he finished the easy dossiers first. Whereas Yves was working on them all simultaneously. The last two are, however, so important that it’s dangerous to let them slip.
@Cypher: if it was for people like you, I wouldn’t mind splitting the country either. Note that NV-A is not pro splitting the country. You guys have just been made afraid of that by news and media. But fine, if you want to let your strong political colored Walloon media think for you, then I can’t help you. Perhaps for the first time in your life read what the party is about. Their chairman has published books, maybe read those instead of your media? His proposals are not insane. Your media is.
@nud: Le Soir is not “Walloon politicians”, you are miswording me. I crystal clearly wrote that “Le Soir made a veto aganist Yves”: Le Soir already publicly said that they’ll “veto” Yves Leterme as prime minister. You see that? “Le Soir”, shall I repeat it one more time? “Le Soir”.
The editor of Le Soir came on television and said “word by word” that she’ll veto Yves Leterme. That was “word by word” indeed. And it was pure arrogance of her to think that a newspaper exists to make political vetos.
It also shows crystal clear how things work in Wallonia. A lot of people follow Le Soir’s opinions like blind idiots. It’s the news paper that spreads most fear, and only fear is those people’s guideline. I’m not interested in people who willingly decided to let a newspaper scare them with lies and nonsense.
I’m guessing that you understand that when Le Soir writes down in an article what Joëlle Milquet said, that this isn’t the same as the editor and chief of Le Soir coming on national television and saying loudly and clear that “she will veto Yves”. That makes it “Le Soir” making the veto.
Hi. I apologise for our gutter press. The scary thing is that The Sun and the Daily Mail are the two biggest selling papers by some considerable margin. These papers, with constant racist and homophobic stories are one of the reasons for the increasing popularity of the far right. The PCC which is supposed to regulate the press is little more than a sham, the editor of the mail is the chair of the editors’ code of practice committee. People believe what they read, leading to all the Political correctness and Health and safety false stories.
The situation will only get worse in the future as both parties in the running for the next government seem to be courting Murdoch &co as much as possible. I fear that the BBC will be severely harmed.
@Ploum: You’re welcome, and the disagreement is not a problem for me. We probably don’t disagree much anyway. Except if you believe that the two remaining big dossiers that Van Rompuy is leaving behind don’t need to be solved. BHV and the state reform *are* things that must be done, they *can’t* be delayed any longer. That they must be done is not negotiable anymore for people in Flanders (and the politicians know this, too). Without those two fixed will our country simply bleed to dead. And then you’ll have your split that your media are making you so afraid of indeed. Because of the country bleeding to dead politically. Not because of a one-sided action.
Martijn: Sounds a bit like our prime minister, then! :p (Balkenende, that is…)
@Mattj: aye. Don’t worry. We know.
@Mattj covered what I came here to say :)
“BHV and the state reform *are* things that must be done, they *can’t* be delayed any longer.”
On that, we agree. Split BHV, and enlarge Brussels. Good deal, everyone’s happy. And reform, yes needed, taxes paid to the region you work in.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Walloon… nor German-speaking actually. I’m one of those forgotten people, you know, those who are not supposed to exist according to Kris Peeters… Yes, Brusseleers ! We are neither Flemish nor Walloons, and we want to be more independent too !
Fuck your stupid “president”, and your stupid unelected, corrupt, beurocratic bull shit “union”, and your leftist bleating. I want my country back.
@Cypher: why must Brussels necessarily be enlarged? You have a single reason? If you want to be more independent, then start supporting the Flemish politicians with their quest to convince Wallonian politicians that the reforms are absolutely necessary. We don’t usually get much support from Brussels’ politicians. Probably because the majority of elected politicians in Brussels come from Wallonian parties. No?
@Gareth: Then write to the politicians of your country that you want them to leave the union. But then ask to really leave it.
pvanhoof: because we have too many people in a too small city. We need more space to allow new buildings. But obviously you do not know anything about living in Brussels. Brussels is the capital city of Europe and we cannot provide enough buildings for that, and to provide houses to all the people living or moving here.
Moreover, if a majority of people living around Brussels want to join it, why not siply listen to the people ? Isn’t that democracy ? Who cares about the territory wars ? Listen to people ! Organize public consultation.
And there is no support from Brussels to Flanders because you just want Brussels to be part of Flanders. But it has never been the case, and it will never be. Brussels is part of Brabant, and Brabant has never been part of Flanders ! If you doubt it, please revise the history of Europe.
And do not think that am I one of those unilingual french-speaking morons… I work in Flanders, I speak French, English and Dutch, and a bit of German. I am all for a multilingual Brussels extended to the borders of Brabant as defined before the border. But you’re too scared of the “French oil pool”. So much that Belgians cannot even move wherever they want in their own country ! It’s easier to move to London than to move to Antwerp. But whatever you do, the Flemish culture is slowly decaying. And so is the Walloon culture… (original Brussels culture has already disappeared, and so what, we have another one now, no problem). It’s being replaced with a different European, more modern, international culture.
So accept to be Belgian first, or just split the country and decay alone in the corner, but do not take those who do not want to die with you ! Ask people what they really want, and let them choose for their future, even if they want to be attached to another region.
But obviously, in Flanders, you never care about people, only about money (which comes originally from Wallonia by the way… Who paid to build Zeebrugge ??) and territory. That’s so outdated… You’ll disappear because, even though your technology is turned towards the future, your minds are definitely years in the past.
pvanhoof: “Whether people from the United States understand that, or don’t understand that: The reality is that it’s utterly irrelevant whether they do or don’t. By that I mean: we don’t need a populist media figure like Obama just because the rest of the world thinks we do. Feel free to replace Obama with Blair, and US with UK in that last sentence.”
Kind of off topic to your main point, but I found this part really interesting! Is it really common opinion in Europe that you all need an Obama too? Why? From my perspective Europe has made steady progress over the last, say, twenty years, and hasn’t been responsible for any Bush-type screw ups. Why would you need an “Obama”, then?
@Philip: I’m not saying the PGO admins want to change your feed. I’m merely saying that it’s unfair to redirect people to the PGO admins if what you want on PGO is your english feed (which was not something really clear in your PS) — unless the content is completely inappropriate, what appears on PGO is your responsability.
@Cypher: That’s a lot of hubris and straw man arguments about Flanders for one comment. In Flanders people don’t want Brussels to be part of Flanders at all. I think you’ll find more support in Flanders to make Brussels an independent city-state, than to make Brussels part of Flanders. In fact, this is already the case. You have your own government in Brussels, or don’t you?
I’m not going to reply to the other straw man arguments.
@Ian: I don’t think we need one. But Obama does indeed get a lot of attention among Europeans. I don’t think Europe hasn’t been responsible for any Bush-type screw ups, though. Perhaps didn’t the screw ups scale as big as Bush’s did …
@pvanhoof: Yeah, I agree with you, which is why it is such a surprise. Obama-envy from a basically peaceful and prosperous region? wtf? I think he’s a great president (or so far, anyway), but what would he add to Europe? Not much…
@Vincent: I guess we differ in opinion on that, then. I think planet-gnome’s moderators, just like any other GNOME project, have a editorial responsibility over their project. Furthermore has each blogger a editorial responsibility over his own blog (and just his own blog). We aren’t planet-gnome authors; we are our own blog’s authors.
I of course already try to ensure that what I write is appropriate for planet-gnome (because I know that it’ll probably appear on it). There are a few planets aggregating my blog. I only have this (minor) discussion with planet-gnome. The other planets simply have moderation and/or ignore the problem (planet-gnome also mostly ignores it, regretfully some of its audience doesn’t).
But yes, all in all I think it’s going fine with planet-gnome and all in all I personally don’t see a reason for having to change things. But that being my personal opinion doesn’t make me responsible for planet-gnome.
I don’t think I’d be a good maintainer for planet-gnome, so I’ll most likely never propose wanting that responsibility.
I think you guys are doing just fine, I think planet-gnome is good the way it is now.
Well, lots of crazy rants attempting to reduce a fiendishly complex situation to misspelled ramblings about inconsequential factoids. I guess “controversial” is an appropriate tag for this post.
Anyway, back on topic.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4181
This profile is certainly coloured by the author’s political views and personal frustrations, but I have some faith in the factual correctness of the raw data. It is interesting because of some of the background information it provides on Van Rompuy.
Specifically, the author paints a picture of him as someone who used to be led by his principles, but has forsaken them over the course of history. Principles inspired by a person’s religion are still principles. An intelligent yet religious person (I know, it sounds like an oxymoron, but they really are out there) can philosophically accept the ideas imposed on him by his religion. Nothing there implies that the idea is wrong or the person is stupid.
So now we have someone who once strongly believed in a Europe based on Christian values and the exclusion of Turkey as our president. Yet when asked what his stand is on Turkey, he announced that his personal opinion does not matter. I think your fears about him letting his personal religious principles interfere with his work are ungrounded.
I, for one, am disappointed by that. I think Europe *should* accept and honour the Christian values on which it was based. And, definitely when it comes to leadership, I trust a man with principles more than a man without.
Btw, there’s a bug in your comment system. It rejected this comment at first when I forgot to fill in the captcha, and when I did, it rejected it again as a duplicate.
You really shouldn’t refer to the EU as “Europe”. I don’t see e.g. Russia joining anytime soon.
Maybe it will even crash our government! Our media was so sure that our prime minister Jan-Peter “what-is-his-name-again?” Balkenende would become the first president of the EU, and our PM handled it so badly that he know as lost a lot of his status. Long live Dutch politics.
I do think that Van Rompuy will become a better president than our prime minister would have been. However, he is from the christian democrats, and they have done really bad things in the European Parliament. First they (justly) criticised the freedom of press in eternal EU candidate Turkey, but when other parties wanted to get the European Parliament to condemn Italy because of a lack of freedom of press — thanks, Berlusconi! — they blocked it (they’re the largest block) because they said the EU had nothing to do with freedom of press in its member states. They also block motions for equality for homosexuals and the other things you’d expect conservative christians not to like. I don’t expect Van Rompuy to not support this.
With Leterme back we could execute Geert Wilders plans and add Flanders to the Netherlands! That would give us Antwerp! (Any ideas on what to do with the Belgians? He didn’t seem to be very interested in those.) Maybe we’ll then have the power to kill off a harbour that is way too much inland for the size it wants to achieve. ;) Save our polders!
By the way, why is it Herman Van Rompuy and not Herman van Rompuy? It’s ugly and looks so wrong!
Phonetics: [ˈɦɛɾmɑn vɑn ˈɾɔmpœy̆]
@Toni: EU stands for European Union
@Toni:
Actually, I think some common values apply to the whole of Europe and are not restricted to the EU for any particular reason.
@Sense:
You’re right, according to Dutch spelling rules, it is Herman van Rompuy. There is a long-standing irritating tradition in Belgium, however, to write the last name first. Dutch spelling rules then dictate that it should be Van Rompuy Herman. This leads many people to believe that the first letter of the last name must always be capitalised, even when preceded by the first name.
@pvanhoof:
I’m just as much as an atheist as the next mentally healthy person. I mean to say that our Western values have evolved in an environment dominated for two millennia by Christianity. Pre-Christian Greek and Roman traditions established values such as democracy, differentiation between the powers, rights and responsibilities of citizens. Christianity added moral values such as honesty, fairness, equality, compassion.
If EU = Europe is okay, then what do you think of USA = America?
Sorry Toni and Ian,
But “EU” simply is the official short version for European Union.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union
“The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 27 member states, located primarily in Europe.”
I’m not using EU because I want to say “entire Europe”. EU simply stands for the words European and Union. It simply is the short version of the term.
Works for me. I think the “USA isn’t America” crowd is super annoying. Europe can mean the EU in my book.
ps. All comments that where marked as spam but weren’t should now be demarked. I removed the duplicates. If somebody still has a comment in spam, let me know.
Ian: And I think the “USA is America” crowd is super annoying and super ignorant.