The short-lived escape of Dutroux was presented in Belgian newspapers yesterday as a matter of deep national shame. "Belgium is the laughing stock of the world - we do not deserve that," Het Laatste Nieuws proclaimed under a half-page headline reading "Disgrace and Shame".
A page two cartoon headlined "Spectacular escape" showed portly Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene sprinting off, proclaiming: "Do not look back. . .run!"
Calling for more heads to roll after the resignations of the interior minister and the justice minister, newspapers said the centre-left government had never been so close to collapse.
With just over a year to go before the next scheduled elections, Mr Dehaene's government had been near "disintegrating", De Standaard said. All newspapers said the escape of Dutroux had been unimaginable, unthinkable and unbearable and condemned police as inept.
"When a country has a Dutroux in prison, when it has lived through an affair that has shaken its foundations, there is no room for error, for extenuating circumstances," Le Soir said in a front page editorial.
"We have been ridiculed several hours (sic) before our entry, which should have been triumphant, into the club of the euro," it added, referring to the May 1st-3rd Brussels summit of European leaders to welcome formally the founding members of the single currency union, due to be launched in 1999.
La Libre Belgique said the escape symbolised the degeneration of the apparatus of the state, and laxity and incompetence.
