2023-07-20 09:52:07
So, to hear the Francophone Liberal Deputy Prime Minister David Clarinval, the MR found itself “alone, facing left” to negotiate a tax reform aimed at reducing the charges on the lowest salaries.
“The left obviously is at fault, because it does not want to take steps towards the MR”, he specifies. We thus discover that in the ideological corpus of the Reform Movement, the CD&V and the sister party, invited to all official ceremonies, the Open VLD, are now considered as “left parties”. Or how to try to play the card of “alone, against all”, to avoid another card, the Black Pete or Stinking Jack !
For the MR, as for the other formations, the time is now for communication, failing to assume a collective failure.
Strategy
This is of course not the first time that the French-speaking liberals have used this positioning. We could even date this strategy back to 2014, when, to the surprise of many, Charles Michel, rejected by regional and community executives, embarked the MR in an improbable federal coalition, where his party was the only French-speaking contribution, minoritized in the middle of Flemish parties, but very homogeneous on the ideological level.
Apart from the consensual parenthesis embodied by Sophie Wilmès, Georges-Louis Bouchez has pursued this strategy at the federal level, playing the confrontation with his French-speaking partners, hoping this time that it will pay off. Indeed, in the 2019 elections, the Francophone Liberals plummeted to their lowest level in 40 years, dropping from 20 to 14 federal MPs.
Who still wants MR?
It should be noted that this way of acting only concerns the federal level. The other executives with MR participation enjoy a relatively peaceful existence between Elio Di Rupo and Willy Borsus in Wallonia or between Pierre-Yves Jeholet and Frédéric Daerden in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. Similarly, socialists and liberals manage in good intelligence, for example, the city of Liège or the municipality of Molenbeek, the provinces of Liège or Hainaut, even… Nethys.
This strategy of confrontation, if not harassment, at the federal level hardly rubs off at other levels. The fear of many liberal leaders in the south of the country is now to be ostracized from positions of power because of this strategy, which increasingly irritates potential partners.
The MR, Bouchez sauce, will have to be essential, and therefore strong electorally, to avoid unpleasant surprises when alliances are formed. Because the Belgian system is like this: consensus (however soft or incongruous it may be) always ends up prevailing.
With this system, no one can be right alone. Except to change the system.
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