- Nineteen prisoners use cutlery to break out of cells at Winchester prison
- France wants progress in Ukraine before Russia returns to G7
- Italy president begins talks to seek way out of government crisis
- Italian PM expected to resign as political chaos deepens
- Russia says US cruise missile test ‘regrettable’
- Kremlin - No date set for Normandy talks on Ukraine despite Macron meeting
- Egypt court hands out 6 death sentences on terror charges
- Putin says Russian nuclear explosion poses no threat
- Russian panel eyes alleged foreign interference in protests
- Gran Canaria wildfire triggers evacuation of thousands of people
- PM Johnson calls on Germany and France to compromise on Brexit
- Sudan's ex-president Bashir arrives at corruption trial
TEHRAN, May 23 - Linguistically-split Belgium holds a national election on Sunday that polls show is unlikely to allow Prime Minister Charles Michel to renew his center-right government.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Michel, 43, has been running the country of 11 million people in a caretaker capacity since December and could face many more months in that role if party leaders struggle to form a new coalition after the vote.
In 2010, that task took a world record 541 days until Elio Di Rupo, who still leads the francophone Socialists, finally took office.
"The lesson from 2010 is we can cope for some time with a caretaker government. There will be a government, but it could be in 2020," said Carl Devos, political analyst at Ghent University.
Belgium effectively runs two separate elections in the Dutch and French-speaking regions, with no national parties, after which it will somehow have to weld together a federal government from a more left-leaning south and right-leaning north.
Wallonia in the south is forecast in polls to shift more to the left, making the Socialist Party (PS) the biggest with the hard left Workers Party (PTB) gaining ground. Michel's liberal Reformist Movement (MR) is seen losing seats in both Wallonia and the capital Brussels.
Among Dutch speakers, the center-right New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which ultimately wants to make richer Flanders a separate country, is expected again to win the most seats, while the far-right Vlaams Belang is also seen making gains.
N-VA, expected to be the largest overall party with some 30 percent of the Flemish vote, could push for further devolution to Belgium's regions, which already have wide powers over transport, agriculture and aspects of economic policy including foreign trade.
That is something the poorer south resists, fearing it will only become worse off.
Source: Reuters
Your Comment