Flemish liberal party is looking for ideas, and most of all for voters
Flemish liberal party Open VLD is organising a "festival of ideas" on Saturday. The party's aim is that it will be a broad brainstorming session about today's challenges and the solutions that politics can offer. Despite the positive spin, the atmosphere is mostly negative. Open VLD is in crisis. Like several other parties, it is struggling for survival.
The June 2024 elections were a punishment for former prime minister Alexander De Croo and his party. The defeat was crushing. With a handful of votes fewer, the party would have fallen under the electoral threshold. The leadership stepped aside.
The new leader, Eva De Bleeker, promised to renew and strengthen her party. The "festival of ideas" was her initiative, as she looked for new ideas and a new name for the party. Although she was chosen by the party members, there was a lack of belief that she could deliver. She decided to step down on her own terms last month, but wanted to press ahead with the festival.
A new leader will be chosen by mid-October. The most likely winner 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 on Saturday.
The fate 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 both language groups, there are only small and medium parties, with discontented fractions of those parties starting even more parties.
During the last elections, the francophone and Flemish green parties Groen and Ecolo, and the radical francophones of Défi also found themselves in the danger zone. A couple of other parties are decimated compared to a few decades ago. So, many party leaders are desperately looking for ways to regain power.
The 2024 elections showed it is possible. Maxime Prévot, as leader of the francophone Christian democrats Les Engagés, succeeded in putting his party back on the map. After years of irrelevance, Les Engagés are now back in governments. 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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