Flemings and Walloons' feud over language highlights political rift

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the Barre Montpelier (VT) Times-Argus:

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Jan 16, 2005
Flemings and Walloons' feud over language highlights political rift

HALLE, Belgium Leafy Victor Mertens Street hardly looks like a front line,
yet it's on byways like this that Belgians are fighting their latest
language battle. The rivalries that used to erupt in riots in city centers
have calmed and moved to the 'burbs as homeowners flee crowded
French-speaking Brussels for a quieter, cheaper life in the Dutch-speaking
towns around the capital.

"A little paradise" is how this Flemish town is viewed by Juan Gonzalez, a
French-speaker from Brussels who moved here a decade ago and sometimes
prunes trees with his Dutch-speaking neighbor. But many people on both
sides of Belgium's language divide have a different view of this new
diversity. They are busting for a fight based on electoral laws that have
evolved in an effort to cool the bitter, age-old rivalry between this
small nation's two main ethnic groups, Dutch-speaking Flemings and
French-speaking Walloons.

The battle over Halle is rooted in one of the great idiosyncrasies of
Belgian political life: Most Flemish districts are limited to
Dutch-speaking political parties, while Walloon areas generally only have
French-speaking parties. The problem with Halle is that although it is a
Flemish town, it falls by an arcane political quirk into a district where
French-speaking parties can appear on the ballot. Flemish parties worry
Halle could give Walloons an opening to gain influence in their region and
are appealing to a special political panel to extend the Dutch-only
electoral rule to the town.

Belgium tries to ease friction between its two rival regions largely by
keeping them apart. Decades of painstaking negotiations have steadily
given more autonomy to Flanders in the north, with its 6 million Dutch
speakers, and Wallonia in the south, with 3.4 million French speakers.
Lying between the two is Brussels, officially bilingual but with a
predominantly French-speaking population of 1 million. Since the 1980s,
the country has seen a cooling of anger that often erupted into violence,
and nearly brought on civil war a half century ago.

But hard feelings are still evident. Many people in Flanders, a more
conservative, Roman Catholic region, grouse that their wealthier
service-based economy subsidizes Wallonia, a socialist coal and steel area
whose industries declined after World War II. Walloons depict Flemings as
narrow-minded and inward-looking. The result is an often divided country,
even though both languages are taught in almost all schools. There are no
statistics on how many Belgians are bilingual, but the Flemish contend
they do far more to learn to communicate with the other side than
French-speakers do.

In many Walloon towns and cities, it is nearly impossible to do everyday
business speaking Dutch. By contrast, market day next to Halle's basilica
is a medley of Dutch and French as shoppers browse through the stalls.
French-speakers order endive and sprouts and get the price genially
shouted back in French, while Flemings next to them make their purchases
in Dutch. "It is a historical trait," said Bert Verdickt, a Fleming
teacher who sometimes plays tennis with a Francophone neighbor. "At least
he makes an effort to learn and speak Dutch. Not many do."

Communicating at the official level is a different story, however. When
French-speakers need help at Halle's city hall, they have to speak Dutch,
a policy imposed by Belgium's language compromises but the clerks
sometimes help out in French, even though they're not supposed to. Still,
language isn't a hot-button issue for most people these days. "At least we
don't fight anymore," Verdickt said. Belgians generally leave the dispute
to be played out in politics these days.

And while Belgium's political parties are linguistically split and mostly
stay out of each other's electoral districts, Flemings and Walloons are
far from divorced in the political realm. All major decisions and changes
in the constitution must have a majority in each language group, forcing
them to work together, however deep the political antagonism. Flanders has
been pitted against Wallonia almost since Belgium was born by splitting
off from the Dutch-speaking Netherlands in 1830.

In its early decades, Belgium was a country mostly dominated by French
speakers, with a huge Flemish underclass. A Flemish identity movement
gained momentum after World War I, and political weight began gradually
shifting northward with the waning of Wallonia's industries and the rise
of the Flemish economy. The regional antagonism reached a crisis after
World War II, when Flanders wanted to have King Leopold III return from
wartime exile over the objections of Wallonia, which felt he had been too
friendly with the occupying Germans.

Ethnic riots swept over the country, including one where three protesters
were shot, and many feared hatreds were escalating out of control. Then
the king abdicated and tensions cooled.

Street brawls still broke out periodically over language, and Leuven
University even split into a Dutch-speaking school and a Francophone
campus in 1968, but the violence faded in the '70s.

The linguistic bickering gets prominent play in the nation's media  and
not only in the political pages.

After a loss by Belgium's national soccer team in mid-December virtually
ended its hopes of getting into the 2006 World Cup tournament,
French-language newspapers were quick to call for the firing of the team's
Flemish coach. When the coaching situation was reversed in the past, it
was Flemish papers that usually were first to call for the coach's job.

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http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050116/NEWS/501160329/1014