Belgium
2
Why Flemish Independence?
Why do the Flemish want to become independent?
Belgium is an artificial state that forces three different nations to live together: the Flemish (i.e. the Southern Dutchmen), the Walloons (a French-speaking people that has never really belonged to France) and some Germans (whose land was annexed by Belgium after the First World War). Unlike in Switzerland, these nations didn't choose to live together, they were forced to. As a result, they lack a national feeling. Belgium's founding fathers designed their construction to be France's satellite state, and they explicitly stated: "La Belgique sera latine ou elle ne sera pas" ("Belgium will be Latin or it will not be"). Although the majority of Belgians speaks Dutch (or Dutch dialects, a.k.a. "Flemish"), the only official language was French. This was part of an imperialist francophone strategy designed to wipe out Flemish culture and replace it with a "Belgian" one. Evidently the Flemish resisted to these attempts, and many generations spent their lives trying to improve the situation of the Flemish, who were regarded by the Belgian state as some kind of inferior lifeform (the Francophones arrogantly assumed, and some of them still do, they were members of Europe's highest civilisation). The Flemish have always had to fight and pay high prices to get their rights recognised by a state that despises them.
Today Belgium is no longer a unitary but a semi-federal state. Dutch has been recognised as an official language and the country is divided in 3 Communities (Flemish, French and German-speaking) and 3 Regions (Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia). The Regions have some powers, others still belong to the "federal state" (Belgium as a whole), which often leads to absurd situations. Both Communities and Regions have their own Parliaments and Governments (only Flanders decided to merge them). Since there is no hierarchy between the different Parliaments and Governments, issues that have to be decided on by both the Federal Government and one or more Regional Governments often result in a deadlock if the Governments don't share the same point of view or, even worse, if they have to defend opposite interests. In Belgium the major fault line is the language barrier. Flanders and Wallonia (or francophone Belgium as a whole) disagree on most issues and have to come up with unsatisfactory compromises no one is really happy with. If they can't get their disputes resolved, the issue is usually blocked until Flanders gives in to the francophone blackmailing. The francophones never give in because they have a very egoistic policy of getting what they want, even if they have to paralyse the country for it and waste other people's time and money.
Belgium's critics have described the country as a "contra-federation" (because the Communities work against each other in stead of working together), or as "Absurdistan" (in this country everything seems to be possible, especially if it is something absurd, like in Franz Kafka's books). The critics are right. Belgium has become an extremely inefficient labyrinth, in which the only productive part is Flanders. It is Flanders that generates all of the wealth and accounts for 80% of the export. This is because the Flemish are by nature an industrious, freedom-loving nation, in opposition to the inproductive, socialist-minded Walloons. All of this inefficiency could be resolved in an easy way - by splitting Belgium in half. If only it were as easy as it sounds.
What is keeping Flanders from becoming an independent country?
Flanders is being robbed by Belgium. Being the most succesfull part of Belgium, it has to give in a considerable amount of its wealth to the Walloons, whose industry has collapsed because it was outdated and the Walloons did nothing about it. Each year € 11 billion is transferred from Flanders to francophone Belgium. That's a huge pile of money. Yet the Flemish politicians don't succeed in getting their demands realised, because everytime Flanders asks something from Belgium, the francophone politicians unanimously say "no". It doesn't work the other way around, however. That's because the Flemish are no bullies and they are not united enough. They simply lack the courage to say no to francophone demands. It's really ironic that in a country where one part represents 60 percent of the population and keeps the other part alive at the cost of its own economy, that one part still has nothing to say.
A majority of Flemings is not really aware of the need for their country to become independent. Those people are either not interested in politics or history, or they have been misinformed. Of course the Belgian state does everything within its power to falsify the schools' historybooks. Thanks to this deliberate negationism most kids don't have a clue about the many disciminations their ancestors have gone through, and they don't know that their country is being dominated by strangers. Fortunately the Flemish public opinion is slowly changing in favor of the secessionist movement. Back in the Sixties one was considered a revolutionary if he carefully mentioned federalism; nowadays speaking about Flemish independence has become very normal. Even most Flemish political parties (except for the socialists and the "greens") have embraced the idea of confederalism (semi-independence). Flanders' biggest party, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), openly promotes secession. The problem is that this party is being boycotted by all other parties, and the other politicians don't have what it takes to proclaim the independence of Flanders. They are afraid of it, and most of them have been corrupted by the Belgian system.
Flanders will be an independent state, it's only a matter of time. There is no stopping the Belgian desintegration. If the Belgian establishment plays its cards right, it will probably be able to slow down the process, but Flemish independence is inevitable. When it will happen, nobody knows, but the Belgian state can be reasonably expected not to survive another decade. Of course some people are afraid of this, and it's perfectly normal to be afraid of change, but it will be a change for the better.
SOURCE
Other sites of interest
http://www.vvb.org
http://www.n-va.be
http://www.vlaamsbelang.org
http://www.meervoud.org
http://www.flemishrepublic.org (English)
Reply With Quote
up
Originally Posted by Elfichka
Bookmarks