Belgian elections, ‘centrist’ flirt with extreme right

This 2017 video, recorded in Barcelona, Catalonia is called Peter Mertens, Workers’ Party of Belgium PTB PVDA.

From Thursday this week till today, there are European parliament elections in many countries.

There are not yet official election results from any country. They will come late this night or on Monday.

In Belgium today, there were not just European elections; but also elections for the national parliament and the regional assemblies of Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels.

There are already partial results and exit polls.

The results so far from Flanders say that all three parties of the previous government coalition, the right-wing NVA Flemish nationalists, the ‘centre-right’ Christian Democrats, and the pro-Big Business Open VLD lost many votes.

Among the opposition parties, the SP.A, social democrats infected by Blairism, lost many votes as well.

The green party Groen won some votes.

The PVDA, the party to the left of social democracy, won many votes, managing to elect MPs for the first time in the Flemish parliament and in the Flemish constituencies of the Belgian parliament.

The extreme right Vlaams Belang party also won many votes. On TV, Vlaams Belang members reacted by chanting ‘Linkse ratten, rol Uw matten!’ (Leftist rats, fuck off!).

Flemish TV interviewed various politicians on the results. Luk Van Biesen, businessman and MP for the Open VLD (the sister party of the British Liberal Democrats, the German FDP etc.) reacted, saying that the ‘centrist‘ parties should start coalition talks with the racist Vlaams Belang. He justified that by claiming that the ‘centrist‘ politicians have no taboo against talking to the ‘extreme left’, so there should similarly be no taboo in talking to the far right.

These words by Mr Van Biesen are mysterious. Unless he considers the ‘centre-left’ SP.A, far more ‘centre’ than ‘left’ and infected by Blairism, to be ‘extreme left’. The Open VLD has sometimes been in coalitions with the SP.A.

Van Biesen cannot mean the PVDA in his remark about coalitions with the ‘extreme left’. As the PVDA today for the first time ever in Flanders has elected MPs. Young Open VLD members disagree with Van Biesen: they say they ‘never ever’ want cooperation with Vlaams Belang.

Peter Mertens, chair of the PVDA, reacted to his party’s election victory. He called it a victory for free health care, against poverty and against right-wing politicians’ plans to make workers work longer hours.

It is good that, against the ‘centrist‘ government policies of austerity, there will be now in parliament not just the fake Vlaams Belang alternative, but also our real leftist alternative, Mertens said. Even though the official Belgian media paid 20 times more attention to the Vlaams Belang election campaign than to the PVDA campaign. The slogan of Vlaams Belang is: ‘Our own [Aryan] people first’; according to Mertens, they really mean: Rich people first.

This video shows Mertens’ speech on the election results.

Daily De Standaard says the PVDA/PTB won 3 MPs in Flanders and 8 in Wallonia and Brussels. UPDATE: 12 MPs, 3 in Flanders, 2 in Brussels, 7 in Wallonia.