Flemish liberal party is looking for ideas, and most of all for voters
Today, Open VLD, the Flemish liberal party, is organising a ‘festival of ideas’. It’s supposed to be a broad brainstorming session about the challenges of today and the solutions that politics can offer. Despite the positive spin, the atmosphere is mostly negative. Open VLD is in crisis. Just like several other Belgian political parties, Open VLD is struggling for survival.
Alexander De Croo, the previous Belgian prime minister, is a member of Open VLD. The June 2024 elections were a punishment for De Croo and his party. The defeat was crushing. With a few fewer votes, the party would have fallen under the electoral threshold. The Open VLD-leadership stepped aside and resigned.
The new president, Eva De Bleeker, promised to renew and strengthen her party. The ‘festival of ideas’ was her initiative. She was looking for new ideas and a new name for the party. But, although she was chosen by the Open VLD members, nobody really believed she could deliver. A couple of weeks ago, she also decided to leave on her own terms, but she wanted to press ahead with her festival.
A new president will be chosen by mid-October. The likely winner of the presidential elections is Frédéric De Gucht, at present the leader of Open VLD in the Brussels region and, as such, a crucial player in the formation of a new Brussels government. De Gucht is convinced of the sense of urgency to save his party and is trying to achieve that by playing it hard. It’s unlikely he will be very interested in the soft talk about inspiring ideas that will be discussed today.
The faith of Open VLD is by no means an exception in Belgium. The popularity of political parties fluctuates everywhere. The specificity in Belgium is the large number of parties and the absence of large parties. In Belgium (in both language groups), there are only small and medium parties, with discontent fractions of those parties starting even more parties.
During last elections, not only Open VLD remained just above the 5 per cent-threshold. Also, the francophone and Flemish green parties Groen and Ecolo, and the radical francophones of Défi, tumbled into the danger zone. A couple of other parties are decimated compared to a few decades ago. So, many party presidents are desperately looking for ways to regain power.
The 2024 elections showed it is possible. Maxime Prévot, then president of the francophone Christian-democratic Les Engagés, succeeded in putting his party back on the map. After years of being irrelevant, Les Engagés are now back in governments. And they did it without the use of extremist or populist proposals. And without a festival of ideas.
#FlandersNewsService | Eva De Bleeker © BELGA PHOTO HATIM KAGHAT
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