We had three elections back in June, and we have another two next month: on Sunday 13 October we will choose the members of our local council and the council of the province of Flemish Brabant.
As my long time reader knows, I like to put questions to the candidates in each election before the vote comes up, picking an obscure but crucial issue and asking their views. Last time around it proved a very helpful tactic.
This time around it has been less helpful. The storm in a teacup exercising us locally is whether or not a supermarket should be built on the land behind the recycling bins 500m from our house. A couple of NIMBYs have managed to block it so far, to the annoyance of those of us who would prefer not to have to trek a couple of miles up or down the road to the nearest shop.
I wrote to the four groups who were standing in the election as of last weekend, and three of them wrote back to me saying that they were strong supporters of the need for a supermarket, in terms which really left little to choose between them. The fourth, the nationalist NVA, did not reply, but I was not going to vote for them anyway. (The three who replied were a coalition led by the liberal Open VLD party, the Christian Democrats, and the Green party in coalition with the Socialists.)
Since then, a fifth faction has entered the fray, a splinter group from the NVA led by a former mayor. I really can’t bring myself to consider voting for the NVA, a nativist populist party who hate migrants (such as me). They’re not as bad as the extreme Vlaams Belang, who are not standing here, but that’s not saying much. The fact that the former mayor has split from them is the best thing about him.
In the last election, the NVA were the biggest party locally, but three of the other four ganged up against them and out local administration has been led by the CDA (Christian Democrats) in partnership with the Greens and Socialists. (Apparently three of the seven elected NVA councillors have since left the party.)
This time around, a couple of things have changed, partly as a result of new legislation aroudn the local council elections. First of all, the party with the most votes automatically gets the position of mayor. Second, voting is no longer compulsory. Third, the Greens and Socialists are running a joint slate here called “Samen” (“Together”). In the last election, they had 34% of the votes between them and would have won 8 seats as a bloc, due to the way the voting system works. (The Imperiali method, if you’re interested.) As it was, the Socialists lost out on a second seat in 2018 by a mere three votes, and the Greens won five.
As I mentioned previously, we had elections for the European Parliament, the Belgian Chamber of Representatives and the Flemish Parliament back in June. The results are published at municipality level, and in our area they were as follows:
| EU Parliament | Belgium Chamber | Flemish Parliament | |
| NVA | 23.51% | 29.74% | 28.46% |
| Socialists | 13.28% | 15.17% | 14.98% |
| Green | 18.21% | 12.90% | 13.88% |
| Christian Democrats | 16.4% | 15.01% | 13.72% |
| Open VLD (liberals) | 11.13% | 10.27% | 11.31%% |
| Vlaams Belang | 11.11% | 10.12% | 10.83% |
| PVDA (hard left) | 3.67% | 4.29% | 4.56% |
| Voor U (minor right) | 1.03% | 1.14% | 1.05% |
| Volt (EU federalist) | 1.66% | – | 0.37% |
| Others | – | 1.36% | 0.82% |
| Socialist + Green | 31.49% | 28.07% | 28.86% |
For the European and Flemish elections, the combined Green/Socialist vote exceeded that for NVA, and they weren’t that far behind in the election for the Belgian Chamber either.
In a municipal election there’s not all that much to choose between the candidates, and I’m broadly content with the current administration’s performance. My personal priority is to prevent NVA coming top and claiming the position of mayor, and it’s pretty clear that the best way to do that is to vote for the ‘Samen’ joint ticket of the Greens and Socialists. So that’s what I intend to do.
(I’ll actually be away on election day, so will either vote early or by proxy.)
As for the provincial elections, I’ll vote for one of the parties that wants to abolish the provinces; I don’t see the point of having them.