I should be proud. This little country of mine made it into the Guinness Book of Records for being the one country that could not manage to get a government in 300 days. You read correctly: forming a government in Belgium takes longer than in postwar Iraq…
I admit, ruling a country of some 250 miles on 100 miles (roughly), with 11 million people must be hard. Belgium is about as big and crowded as greater LA, but the politicians are having a hard time… doing… well, no one knows exactly what they are doing . Splitting some stuff, to keep the other stuff together sums it up quite nicely. For 300 days, we got more people working on forming a government than I care to feed. Unfortunately, I do… feed them, through the about 60 percent of taxes that I contribute faithfully…
Even journalists are getting bored with it. For the last days, we got a “dissident” prince on the front page, the fact that a politician changed his (I swear!) French fries supplier was national headlines, and the picture of the tired boxer shorts of yet another politician stare at me from the cover of a quality newspaper.
Belgium. Maybe, we should sell it. Or franchise it. Or call the cavalry. Or call 82nd Airborne division. Or go back to what we’re good at: tap some beer and find a Belgian compromise…
Looks like a good Belgian compromise is exactly what’s failing us today… It’s not getting ridiculous anymore, that was six months ago. Now it’s just getting boring. Maybe they could end the joke now?