The Bachelor, but Belgian politics
Reality TV show may be on voters’ minds
In the US, Donald Trump and Joe Biden can barely agree to share a stage for a debate. In Belgium, the politicians who will face off today in the country’s most contested general election in years agreed to a four-episode reality show filmed over a weekend and set in a castle — moat and all.
The show, a political version of The Bachelor, called The Conclave, transfixed Belgians in the run-up to the vote for the country’s national and regional Parliaments. The elections coincide with those for a European Parliament, in which 27 European Union countries will vote.
As in many other European countries, the mainstream political establishment in Belgium has shrunk electorally. The far right has surged.
But for Belgium, that dynamic is further complicated by the divide between the country’s Frenchspeaking south, Wallonia, and its Dutch-speaking north, Flanders.
The show’s conceit is centred on the personal dynamics between politicians who are rivals but must ultimately work together to manage the rise of the far right. Perhaps by putting them together for a few days, they can resolve some of their differences.
If nothing else, the show succeeded in airing the grievances that have made a far-right, antiimmigrant, Flemish secessionist party, Vlaams Belang, the election front-runner. A victory for the party could precipitate a crisis for Belgium by thrusting the issue of Flemish independence to the top of the political agenda and threatening to break the country in two.
Whether the show succeeded in facilitating real-world co-operation is another matter. The parties in the political mainstream have long struggled to come together in key moments, and Belgium has become famous for taking record time to form shaky, multi-party coalitions.
Vlaams Belang’s meteoric rise has made that task more urgent and daunting.
Against the backdrop of the stunning grounds and grand interiors of Jemeppe Castle, a medieval chateau, Eric Goens, a journalist, plays host on The Conclave to seven prominent politicians from Flanders. They go for walks in the woods. They cook. They eat together. And they get into arguments.
There are moments of conflict and reconciliation; awkward silences and barely disguised disgust; even solo confessional interviews in a chapel.
Among the seven are Tom Van Grieken, the leader of Vlaams Belang; the sitting Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo, a liberal; and Petra De Sutter, a trans member of the Greens and one of Belgium’s Deputy Prime Ministers.
The bedfellows are political
Vlaams Belang, which translates to Flemish Interest, was among the first in a wave of European far-right parties to capitalise on anti-migrant sentiment across Europe. Originally called Vlaams Blok, the party promoted the return of second- and third-generation Belgians of migrant descent to their ancestral homelands.
In 2004, the party was convicted of violating Belgium’s anti-racism law and banned from standing in elections. The party has since changed its name and image, but, critics say, little else. Belgium, a prosperous northern European country of 11 million people, is home to sizeable migrant communities, including Muslims with North African roots, who remain the party’s main target. This has led all other Belgian political parties to make a long-standing vow to never govern with Vlaams Belang. The question is whether they can manage to uphold that promise if, as projected, Vlaams Belang comes first in the election.
Just as pressing, the party wants Flanders — home to about 60 per cent of the population — to secede from the federal state of Belgium and form its own country. The question of how to manage Van Grieken’s popularity is perhaps most pressing for Bart De Wever, who leads the conservative, nationalist New Flemish Alliance. He was also among the politicians who participated in The Conclave.
Van Grieken would like the two parties to join forces, form a Flemish Government and use it as a launchpad to ultimately force Flemish independence. De Wever wants Flemish independence, too, but calls secession “a fantasy”.
A self-described pragmatist, he is running on a platform that would instead transfer still more powers from Belgium’s federal Government to its regions, including Flanders.
The tension between the two men boils over in a fireside scene that oozes reality-TV drama.
“Maybe you start to understand why things are so hard between leader one and leader two,” Goens, the show’s host, said in an interview. “It goes very deep, and you never get to see that in the normal debate.”
Bad Blood
The Conclave shows how these differences go far beyond ideology in Belgium. The notoriously protracted post-election negotiations of the past have also left deep scars.
Both supporters of liberal economic policies, one would expect current Prime Minister, De Croo, and De Wever to be natural political partners. But the pair fell out over the last coalition negotiations, in which De Wever accused De Croo of slyly undercutting him.
“I’m really not looking forward to this, because there is bad blood between us,” De Wever tells the camera before confronting De Croo.
When the two men finally sit down together, De Croo tries to convince him that they can join forces this time around, but the conversation keeps going back to old grievances.
De Croo tries to end on a positive note. “I’m not a vindictive person,” he says, “and if it’s about making our country stronger for all Belgians and not splitting our country, then we can work together.”
That remains to be seen.