BRUSSELS (AP) – Belgium has a new prime minister whose political purpose was long to break up the nation, gut the state structures and give ever more autonomy to his northern Flanders at the cost of everyone else.
Bart De Wever took the oath early Monday, looking straight at King Philippe, the latest monarch of a royal house he so long had little but disdain for because it symbolized the old concept of Belgian unity.
“I swear allegiance to the king,” he said.
It was another indication how times change, and bold demands for Flemish independence have made room for the hope of gradual change and finding a renewed balance between Dutch-speaking Flanders, with 6.7 million people, francophone Wallonia, with 3.7 million, and multilingual Brussels, with 1.2 million.
The prime minister and leading ministers took the oath in Dutch and French while several others on the 15-member team from both sides of the linguistic divide stuck to their own language during a short ceremony at the Royal Palace.
“You can … not take part in a government and wait until the system can be taken as a whole. I never believed in that,” he told De Standaard newspaper. “The other option is…
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