BELGIAN NATIONAL DAY


27 July 2007

Belgium's national day was celebrated last weekend, on the 21 July. The day commemorates when Leopold the I took the constitutional oath as the very first King of Belgium.

However, on this day when the new Prime Minister Yves Laterme (who was elected in June but who is not yet the PM due to long negitiations about the formation of the new government) was asked to sing the Belgian national anthemn, he sang The Marseillaise. It must have been an embarrasing moment for Mr Laterme. While he did loose much confidence singing this French anthem, it can probably also be interpreted a thought through strategic move: Mr Laterme is of Wallone origin, but known as 'Mr Flanders' whose political goal is to give more devolved powers to Belgian regions. This would be good news to the prosperous Flanders and less good news to the poorer Wallonia. So singing the Marseillaise could well have been his way of showing that he doesn't want a united Belgium, so put simply, he couldn't care less about the country's anthem either.

Laterme's little mishap goes bizarrly well hand in hand with some aspects of how the Belgian National day is celebrated in Brussels: The day's centre of attention is a military parade on Rue de la Loi, trough Parc de Bruxelles, to the Royal Palace. First the Air Force impressively flew across the city sky, showing their different planes. They were then followed by the army and their tanks, trucks, busses... and then military lawn mawers and all other interesting and rather let's say, low profile, vehicles. These were then joined by: ambulances, fire engines, police cars and vehicles from the Red Cross - all neatly together two and two - one from a Walloon city and the other from Flemish city, Liege and Antwerp for example, hand in hand!

I was amazed by the how the country was joined togther by, literally speaking, military force. Especially given that the theme of this year's celebrations was '50 years together', marking the last 50 years of peace in Europe since the Treaties of Rome were signed.