ANALYSIS:Belgium hasn't had a government for eight months, but the state functions just fine, writes ARTHUR BEESLEY
THE OTHER day, I had a long chat with a man who has lived for many years in Belgium, a country which has been without a government for 257 days. In eight months of political paralysis, he was unable to think of a single inconvenience in his personal or professional life. The question naturally arose as to whether a government was needed at all.
I wonder. On this day of days, as Irish voters go to polls to hold their leaders to account for a painful economic implosion, it’s worth recalling the limitations of government power. There will be blood, for sure, when the ballots boxes are opened tomorrow, but the future may not look a whole lot different come Monday morning.
The outgoing Belgian administration fell asunder last April over an arcane quarrel about voting rights in part of Brussels. An election followed in June. Since then the leaders of the Dutch-speaking and Francophone communities have been unable to form a powersharing coalition.
They are divided, hugely so, over constitutional reform. In large part, the riddle revolves around public expenditure. About €11 billion a year transfers from prosperous Flanders, where they speak Dutch, to French-speaking Wallonia, which is comparatively poorer. One side wants this cut, the other to preserve it. Neither will budge, and that’s not half the story.
The scene is so bad that Belgian leaders seem at times to be trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube in the dark, working only with one hand. The solution may be out there somewhere but the debate is going nowhere. Slowly, inexorably, they slouch towards new elections.
The politicians have been sinking in quicksand for many months yet civilian life goes on as normal. In fact, everything is just fine. There’s food on the shelves, money in bank machines, petrol in the pumps. Restaurants are crammed at the weekend.
It may be on autopilot, but the public service is in full swing. Doctors tend to the sick, kids attend class, teachers are paid.
Anarchy it ain’t. If WikiLeaks is to be believed, the US still stores some of its nuclear arsenal here. Stable enough for American nukes, stable enough for anything. Prisoners remain locked up, the streets are not overrun with vermin. Nor, for that matter, are they overrun with protesters. There’s been the odd demonstration against the stalemate and a few internet campaigns; nothing, however, to shake the political classes into action.
It’s probably in the nature of advanced societies that life can proceed largely without disruption in the absence of a functioning government. Even without leaders who can introduce new laws, the administrative system remains intact. For all its abundant duplication, the Belgian bureaucracy doesn’t lack for spontaneous precision. It rattles along dandily without a government.
Two accommodating factors may be at work, however. The first is the high degree of devolution to the country’s five regional authorities. These authorities have power over large elements of the education and health systems and other matters besides. They continue to function as normal. This means many tricky problems can be fully ironed out before they go national at all.
The second is the absence of a crisis large enough to bring bickering politicians to their senses. A few weeks back it looked like the sovereign debt emergency might scorch Belgium. Then the flames receded. Even with bond vigilantes on high alert for weakness, the absence of a government has yet to present a serious investor problem for one of the most heavily indebted countries in the euro zone. No wonder Belgian politicians can luxuriate in fruitless constitutional debate.
In celebrity magazines, plaintive headlines and sombre pictures endlessly depict King Albert’s “sadness” and “pain” at the stagnation. In serious newspapers, the affair is treated as tragicomedy. Yet it goes on and on.
The month of March is almost upon us and still there’s no budget for 2011. Although efforts are under way to agree an emergency spending plan, one-twelfth of the 2010 budget is available every month to the caretaker administration. All told that’s more money than in the modest deficit-cutting plan Albert sought in January. He’s still waiting.
High-level appointments to the public service can’t be made and important pension and social security reforms are completely stalled. Plenty of other work is in suspension, yet everyday living remains the same.
Are there lessons here? Although some Belgians caustically complain that politicians’ wages should be stopped outright for as long as they don’t form a government, most people are getting on with life. In a crisis about the organisation of state, the state continues to operate quite well. That says rather a lot about the ingrained solidity of the present constitutional compact, even if the present malaise suggests its sell-by date has long past.
If Irish politicians followed the dubious example of their Belgian brethren, it would be October at the earliest and possibly a lot later before a new administration was formed. Would the sky fall in? Perhaps not, though yet more damage would be done to Ireland’s credibility with the outside world. It’s not going to happen anyway.
But will a new government really make such a difference? For all the arid pieties and rhetoric of the election campaign, it is clear the incoming administration will be heavily circumscribed for many years to come by the bailout pact. Renegotiation or not, the policy template into the future is essentially fixed.
In that context, to govern is to follow. There’s no point in arguing otherwise. Does anyone seriously think the tough-love gang in the International Monetary Fund will suddenly turn cuddly simply because a brave new minister asked them to? A fresh start will still be promised in the coming days, renewal in the face of wrenching adversity. That can only be for the good. While we need a solid new order, however, the administration will saunter along whether one is in place or not.
In Belgium, meanwhile, the authorities seem to do everything but govern. Over here they pay for children’s music lessons and even pay for adults’ lessons too. Courtesy of the state, a pal of mine is learning the trumpet. Ask not what you can do for your government.
Arthur Beesley is European Correspondent