Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Why Belgium should stop to exist - or not ?

This is not a political blog. This is a blog about management and leadership issues. A conversation earlier this week however brought politics, management and leadership together as if matching ingredients on 1 plate. The message triggering this mix was delivered to me by a successful Flemish entrepreneur. His message was short and simple: "Every time our Prime-Minister-To-Be (Mr. Leterme, red) opens his mouth, I loose a client in Wallonia". I was quite surprised to hear this. And the entrepreneur went on: " I will be obliged to buy a sick Walloon company, as a front store to keep Walloon clients. They do not have to know I will still produce their products in my plant in Flanders." It is true the Belgian politicians have a hard time installing a new Belgian government. And it is true that a difference in opinion about the future of this country separates Flemish and Walloon parties. And apparently the result of the recent elections proved in a way that a majority of the Flemish people want Flanders to be running the show in Belgium. Even worse a lot of Flemish people seem to want to destroy Belgium as a country and install the "Republic of Flanders" in Europe.

Question: Do regions in other countries have the right to fight their constitutional motherland to become independent ?
Answer: The answer is yes, if these regions are oppressed. If their freedom or language or future is taken away from them by an hostile group of people in power.

Logical question now: Is Flanders an oppressed region in Belgium ?
Realistic answer: I don't think so. On the contrary.

Question: Why is a growing group of people in Belgium trying to destroy the concept of Belgium as a country and install instead an autonomous Republic of Flanders?
Answer: ....

Question: Why is growing group of people in Belgium convinced the Monarchy should be replaced by a Presidency ?
Answer: ....

Question: Are there people that want to destroy Belgian as a Kingdom and replace it by the Kingdom of Flanders ?
Answer: ....

Question: What are the actual reasons for a group of Belgian people to ask the termination of Belgium ?
Answer 1: The only thing I hear is that Wallonia is sick and that Flanders is paying the bill. A radical Flemish party illustrated this situation by filling trucks with (fake) money and drive them from Flanders to Wallonia. The amount of money in the trucks apparently resembled the amount of money Flanders is paying every year to Wallonia (depending on the source this amount varies between 3,5 and 12,5 billion Euro/year. More accurately, specialists claim the yearly transfer of money from Flanders to Wallonia is expected to be around 6,6 billion Euro (according to an Abafim study in 2004)).

Answer 2: To my surprise "the money" seems the only reason why we (Flanders) should separate from Wallonia. I haven't heard anybody complain about the smell of the Walloon people (horrible), their laziness (repulsive), their arrogance (we all had to speak French in the past), their lack of intelligence (well hidden until our Prime-Minister-To-Be unmasked this a few weeks ago by warning us that Walloon people can not learn to speak Flemish because they lack the intelligence), their mafia-led cities (dangerous, it's a cancer that could infect Flanders), and last but not least their inhospitality (they typically burn the houses of Flemish people who once bought a house in the Ardennes, and they invariably abduct the women of the Flemish men daring to go on holiday in Wallonia!!)(appalling, Walloons are true animals).
So yes of course there are all sorts of good reasons to divorce Wallonia.

Question: Isn't it true that a good part of the people shouting for the termination of Belgium today, desperately wanted to annex Flanders to Germany before and during the Second World War ?
Answer: Of course not, what a stupid question is this ?