For your background on where i am now, check out this article published in The Wall Street Journal Europe. Yeahh only if youre interested on political stuff. Nothing is perfect in the world. I it?

Cordon Unsanitaire: Belgium's Far Right Is Thriving
By Joshua Livestro / 16 June 2004

BRUSSELS -- Five years ago, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt
challenged voters to measure his success by his ability to curtail the
growth of the right-wing Flemish Blok party. By that measure, his term in
office has been a disaster. Last weekend, Mr. Verhofstadt's party, the
Flemish Liberal Democrats, or VLD, suffered its first ever Flanders-wide
defeat at the hands of the Blok. Normally, Verhofstadt would have no choice
but to resign. That would then clear the way for a lifting of the so-called
"cordon sanitaire" that bans all other parties from even talking to the
Blok. Normally, gaining a 24% percent share of the vote and becoming the
second largest party in Flanders (after the Christian Democrats) should be
enough to earn the Blok a place at the table.

But this is Belgium, a country where nothing is ever normal. Mr. Verhofstadt
will probably stay in place, as will the cordon sanitaire. To understand
this, it's important to understand why the cordon was imposed in the first
place. The formal case for the cordon sanitaire is that the Blok is an
extreme right-wing party with outrageous political views. A recent
conviction of one of its supporting organizations for violating anti-racism
laws (a politically motivated judgment, according to the Blok leadership) is
presented as evidence in support of the claim that it is unworthy of normal
political dialogue, let alone government.

Maybe so, but then so are the Austrian Freedom Party of Jorg Haider and Pia
Kjersgaard's Danish People's Party. And Mr. Haider's party has been in
government for four years now, while Ms. Kjersgaard's party managed to wring significant policy concessions from Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in exchange for support for his minority center-right government. Pim Fortuyn may not have been extreme, but was he certainly outrageous. That didn't stop the other Dutch center-right parties from co-opting his List Pim Fortuyn into government.

The Blok's message of closed borders, forced assimilation and confrontation
with Islamic culture may be an affront to the political sensibilities of the
other Belgian parties. But it places them squarely in the new European
political mainstream, where governments left, right and center are now
proposing the same policies the Blok has been advocating for the past 20
years.

The reason the cordon is there to stay has less to do with principle than
with profit. Political profit, that is. The main proponents of the cordon
sanitaire are the Socialists, the Greens and Verhofstadt's left-wing faction
within the Liberal Democrat Party. These groups have little to gain and
everything to lose by a lifting of the ban.

To start with the Socialists and the Greens: they find themselves in the
unenviable position of having to contest elections in a region (Flanders)
that has always been predominantly center-right. Under normal circumstances,
that fact would have condemned them to eternal opposition. But the cordon
sanitaire helps to maintain the abnormal circumstances that make the
formation of a center-right majority government impossible. As long as it
stays in place, no coalition can be formed without left-wing participation.
Needless to say, the Greens and the Socialists have been enthusiastic
supporters of the cordon from the start. It's no surprise that it was the
party chairman of the Greens, Jos Geysels, who first suggested the
imposition of the cordon sanitaire back in 1989.

Support for the cordon from Prime Minister Verhofstadt's liberal faction
with the VLD is based on a different political calculation. By criminalizing
the Blok and its positions, it has become virtually impossible for any group
inside his party to challenge him from the right. Any attempt to do so is
swiftly condemned by him as "playing the Blok's game." As long as this ban
on right-wing positions stays in place, his center-left faction is
guaranteed to remain in power within the VLD.

Until recently, the real losers of the cordon were not the Blok but the
Christian Democrats, squeezed on the left by the VLD and on the right by the
Blok. A merger with the right-wing Flemish nationalist People's Union has
given them a new lease on life. But for how long? True, last weekend's
Flemish election results saw them coming in first, beating the Blok by a
mere 2%. But that success seemed to have more to do with midterm blues for
Mr. Verhofstadt than with the strength of their own positions. If they
persist in their refusal to negotiate with the Blok, they will probably pay
the price at the next elections. The vagaries of the Belgian constitutional
setup would effectively force them to join Verhofstadt's government as
junior partners. Any successes will be his alone. And he will try his
hardest to make sure any blame will be shared by everyone but himself.

In the meantime, the Blok will continue to reap the electoral rewards of its
enforced isolation. Over the past 15 years, it has become an extremely
effective opposition party, gaining ground on the big three parties at every
election. Its strategy of taking its appeal against the conviction not to
the courts but directly to the people has been an overwhelming success. In
the Flemish-speaking part of Brussels, it's now almost as big as all the
other Flemish parties put together. In Antwerp, only a coalition of all the
other parties is large enough to keep the Blok in opposition. And even this
coalition of all against one may not be enough to stop the Blok's
charismatic leader, Filip Dewinter, from winning the Antwerp mayoral
elections two years from now.

---

The cordon sanitaire is turning into an electoral disaster for its
supporters. The time has come to scrap it. This may be the last time the
Christian Democrats can negotiate with the Blok from a position of strength.

It should use this final opportunity to force the Blok to accept some
serious concessions. Because next time, there may not be a next time.