Why
Belgian politicians haven’t lost their jobs
The
blame game after the Brussels attacks gathers pace, but no one
accepts responsibility.
By TIM KING
3/30/16, 5:34 AM CET
Barely a week has
elapsed since Brussels was hit by terrorist attacks, but already
Belgian politics has descended into what Belgian politicians do
supremely well: finger-pointing, blame-shifting and name-calling.
Those, including
myself, who dared to hope that the enormity of last Tuesday’s
events might oblige Belgian politicians to unite for the purpose of
much-needed reform, look like being disappointed.
On Sunday afternoon,
a bunch of racist thugs added an unseemly note of farce to Belgium’s
international ignominy: they marched on Place de la Bourse in
Brussels and attempted to trash the memorials and to disrupt the
vigil staged there since Tuesday’s attacks. Police eventually saw
them off with water-cannon, but it didn’t take long for Yvan
Mayeur, the francophone socialist mayor of Brussels (the central city
borough, not the whole of the Brussels region), to blame the
breakdown in public order on Flemish politicians.
To
the outside world, given how many mistakes have already emerged, and
the numbers of people who have died in Paris and now in Brussels, it
seems unbelievable that no front-rank Belgian politician has had to
resign from government.
He pointed an
accusing finger at Hans Bonte, a Flemish socialist, the mayor of
Vilvoorde, from where the thugs set off by train for neighboring
Brussels, and Jan Jambon, Belgium’s interior minister, who is from
the Flemish nationalist party, N-VA.
In an interview with
a francophone television channel, Mayeur said he no longer had
confidence in Jambon. He said that Flanders was contaminating
Brussels with its extremists, who were followers of the N-VA and Bart
De Wever (the N-VA’s party leader and the mayor of Antwerp). In
response, Jambon’s spokesman said that what happened in Place de la
Bourse fell under the authority of the mayor — i.e., Mayeur.
* * *
For those accustomed
to the ways of Belgian politics, this is deeply depressing and
horribly familiar. The buck-passing and blame-shifting in the wake of
Tuesday’s attacks is beginning to mount up, albeit the Mayeur
outburst — a sideshow compared to the main agenda of
counter-terrorism — was one of the least restrained and silliest.
Jambon himself
stands accused of trying to put the blame for failing to pick up one
of the airport suicide bombers on a police liaison officer stationed
in Istanbul. The government in Turkey claims that it told Belgian
representatives in Istanbul that Brahim el-Bakraoui was on his way by
plane from Turkey to Amsterdam — though the quality of that
information is disputed.
Jambon also appeared
to blame the Brussels regional government for failing to stop the
metro after the airport bomb. The suggestion is that the death-toll
inflicted by the bomb at Maalbeek station might have been prevented
or at least reduced if the metro had been closed down and evacuated
when it became clear that terrorists had struck at the airport.
Other “What if?”
questions have emerged.
The police chief in
Mechelen has apologized for failing to pass on information that Salah
Abdeslam’s cousin had been radicalized. It was this cousin who gave
Abdeslam shelter in the days before his capture. The federal
prosecutor questioned Abdeslam only briefly between his capture on
Friday and the bomb attacks on Tuesday. The police seem to have moved
in quickly on the apartment in Schaerbeek immediately after the
explosions. So was that apartment-turned-bomb-factory already on
their watch-list? To put it kindly, these incidents add to an overall
impression that information was available, but not passed on
efficiently.
To the outside
world, given how many mistakes have already emerged, and the numbers
of people who have died in Paris and now in Brussels, it seems
unbelievable that no front-rank Belgian politician has had to resign
from government. It emerged in the 48 hours after Tuesday’s attacks
that Jambon, the interior minister, and Koen Geens, the justice
minister, had offered their resignations to the prime minister,
Charles Michel, but he had instructed them to stay in office, saying
that this was not the time for resignations. Although Jambon and
Geens have since been accused of offering their resignations as a
political stunt — knowing that they would be refused — there has
been no general clamor for political heads to roll.
To those accustomed
to other political traditions, where ministerial sackings and
resignations are a recurring feature of political life, that the
Belgian government should – up to now at least – survive intact,
seems extraordinary.
For those more
accustomed to Belgian ways, it is less surprising, even
understandable. Recall that no minister resigned because of the
mistakes made by the forces of law and order in the investigation of
Marc Dutroux, who abducted, raped and killed young girls in the
1990s, one of the most traumatic periods for the Belgian
establishment during the last 30 years. It was only when Dutroux
escaped from a courthouse in 1998, two years after his arrest, that
ministers resigned — the then interior minister and justice
minister.
* * *
In the British
government, ministerial resignations are relatively common because
the prime minister has such centralized power: it has become a
presidential system in all but name. David Blunkett resigned twice,
once as interior minister, once as work and pensions minister. Both
times, his resignation was demanded by Prime Minister Tony Blair
because of scandals that damaged the government. The first was when
his love-life spilled over into the newspapers — and allegations
surfaced that he had speeded up a visa application for his ex-lover’s
nanny. On the second charge — undeclared share dealings — he was
later cleared of wrongdoing, but too late to reverse his sacking.
Peter Mandelson
became Britain’s European commissioner for trade largely because he
had twice been obliged by Blair to resign from government because of
controversies about his behavior — a misleading declaration in a
mortgage application and accusations (denied) over interference in a
passport application. An inquiry later cleared him of impropriety.
Belgian politics is
different from British politics in more than just its reluctance to
make sex scandals a reason for resignation. The
resignation-as-thinly-disguised-sacking is much less common, largely
because the prime minister exerts much less power over his ministers,
who are mostly of different parties.
In the current
instance, while Michel is a francophone liberal, from the Reformist
Movement party, his justice minister Geens is a Flemish Christian
Democrat (CD&V) and his interior minister Jambon is from the New
Flemish Alliance (N-VA). The fourth party in the coalition is Open
VLD, the Flemish liberals. For all that Michel is prime minister,
N-VA is the biggest party in the federal parliament. And to dislodge
a minister is to challenge a particular party’s standing in the
government. Michel cannot survive without N-VA’s continued support,
and N-VA leader De Wever will not allow Jambon to be made the
scapegoat for all the mistakes committed by various authorities.
The geometry of
Belgian coalition governments is complicated, with ministries shared
out according both to their number and importance. Changing the
balance in the federal government risks knock-on effects in the
composition of regional governments below. All of which means that an
individual minister’s security depends a great deal on whether he
or she has the confidence of his or her own party’s leadership and
on the strength of that party within a coalition.
In 2003, Isabelle
Durant, leader of the francophone Green party, Ecolo, resigned from
Guy Verhofstadt’s first government, which was a symmetrical
coalition of liberals, socialists and greens from each side of the
linguistic divide. Durant and her party colleague Olivier Deleuze
stepped down after a clash with Verhofstadt over the issue of night
flights from Brussels airport. The socialists sided with Verhofstadt
and the Greens found themselves isolated and impotent.
But this kind of
resignation — a protest over policy — is common to all political
cultures: it is the moment when the minister has had enough, and
because of a personality clash with the prime minister, or a
disagreement over policy (and frequently the former masquerading as
the latter), walks out in a huff slamming the door behind. A recent
instance in Britain was the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith as work
and pensions secretary. Margaret Thatcher made a habit of inducing
such resignations: most famously those of Michael Heseltine, Nigel
Lawson and Geoffrey Howe — the latter’s door-slamming ultimately
brought her down. The departure of Oskar Lafontaine from the first
government of Gerhard Schröder would fit this pattern.
* * *
What critics of the
current Belgian government crave is a sacrificial resignation — the
honorable departure of a minister prepared to take the blame for the
administration’s errors. The most clear-cut example from post-war
British history would be that of Peter Carrington, who resigned as
foreign minister in 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands.
He was taking responsibility for the foreign ministry’s failures of
policy and planning. (John Nott, the defense minister, also offered
his resignation, but Thatcher kept him in post.) Carrington’s
ministerial career in British politics was over, though he later
became secretary-general of NATO.
Outsiders
should be cautious in assuming that honorable resignations would make
the Belgian government stronger. That depends on the replacement
talent available.
Belgian politics has
a weaker expectation that ministers should take responsibility for
the mistakes of their civil servants. In part that is because the
senior ranks of the civil service are more strongly politicized: the
jobs are divided according to party and linguistic affiliations,
which blurs the lines of accountability. Why would a minister resign
for mistakes made by his or her political opponents?
Note that Claude
Fontaine, director-general of the federal judicial police, has had a
prominent role in the investigations into alleged terrorists since
the November 13 attacks in Paris, but has not long been in that post.
His predecessor Glenn Audenaert served two terms, but is now charged
with corruption over real estate contracts related to the new office
accommodation for his service. A culture of honorable ministerial
resignations presupposes a culture of honest administration, and that
is belied by Belgium’s history of clientelism.
Similarly, the
fragmentation of Belgian government militates against the honorable
resignation. Where there is so much uncertainty about who has
responsibility — whether local, regional or federal government —
and so many mistakes are about passing information between those
layers, it barely makes sense for a federal minister to take the
blame for errors committed at some other level of government. Where
power is passed down (however fuzzily), so too will be the
expectation to resign. Why should the interior minister resign, runs
this argument, while the mayor of Molenbeek remains in office?
Outsiders should be
cautious in assuming that honorable resignations would make the
Belgian government stronger. That depends on the replacement talent
available. N-VA is a young party that has only recently begun to
taste power in the regional and federal governments. A prime minister
who sacrifices his leading ministers would like to be confident that
the replacements will be at least half as good. In the case of Geens
and Jambon, there is no such guarantee. And both men sit atop
ministries that are awash with problems.
Michel may well
calculate that at this moment it is better to keep Geens and Jambon
on board, however tainted, because they have had nearly 18 months in
power to get to know their ministries and their police and judicial
interlocutors. This moment of viperous recrimination is hardly the
ideal time to blood a neophyte minister.
Michel’s good
fortune is that his main opposition are the socialists, whose record
of municipal government in Brussels, in Charleroi and formerly in
Antwerp can be blamed for various failures to get to grips with the
jihadi threat. The various parties in the coalition have their
differences, but it is hard to see how a government that took five
months to put together after the May 2014 elections can be partially
disassembled. The current government will, it seems, stand or fall
together and no single party will want to take the blame for bringing
the government down at a moment of national crisis.
Michel I is
wobbling, but it is holding on, in the absence of an alternative.
Tim King writes
POLITICO‘s Brussels Sketch.
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