Oversimplification

[franceslievens]

Sarkozy and the French elections land on the BBC News homepage. After some lurking and clicking around I finaly find a little article on the Belgian federal elections. Speaking of oversimplification: there you have it. No history, no general framework, no explanation, no nothing. This mainly shows that Belgium is a no-nothing country that yells about regional problems that are considered feeble abroad. If only we would put all those so-called problems aside, maybe they'd take us more seriously.

P.S.: Flemish liberals have lost together with Flemish socialists, leaving Christian Democrats as the biggest party. On French-speaking side the liberals and socialists are still very strong, with either one of them being the biggest party in the French-speaking constituencies. Here's to an interesting round of negotiations.

Comments

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the BBC coverage, but I managed to skim an article (http://www.zeit.de/2007/24/Belgien) in DIE ZEIT, my favourite weekly, about the elections published on Thursday. It seemed fairly in-depth to me (though possibly rather off-the-mark in its analysis).

They've also got an article (http://www.zeit.de/news/artikel/2007/06/10/2318247.xml) up about the results, but that's part of their news section, so not the actual paper and seems to be borrowed from Der Tagesspiegel which is a daily newspaper. Apart from the rather alarmist headline it seems to be quite factual.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

Both articles seem rather to-the-point and in-depth. I have only skimmed them -- maybe will read them later when I'm up for some German.

The alarmist headline for the artocle on the results is actualy what the right-wing party has been proclaiming (and what I as a leftist actualy see). I think it's the same trend that earned votes for Sarkozy in France. Christian Democrats are big winners in Flanders and they'd call themselves the only centrist party. Let's say they're right of center, as is the party LDD that went from nothing to 6,5% in Flanders (4% overall) earning them 5 seats in the chamber.

Wasn't in the best of moods when writing the above LJ-entry. One should never read reader comments on a news-site. Generaly people write nonsense on there.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Reader comments can be very annoying.

The elections in Belgium actually got quite a lot of coverage here, but then we're neighbours and not across the channel.