Bart De Wever: The man who wants to destroy Belgium reluctantly heads toward running it

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BRUSSELS — Belgium is reaching peak surrealism. A man who has spent his entire political career trying to break up the country is now on track to become its prime minister — even though he insists he doesn’t want the job.

Local elections on Sunday have paved the way for Bart De Wever, Belgium’s highest-profile politician and the winner of its June national elections, to finally run the country.

Talks to form a new government have dragged on for months and had been losing steam, but the local elections have now given a new impetus to the process. The parties who won in June held their ground and now hope De Wever of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) will take the helm before Christmas.

Belgium’s king met with De Wever on Thursday, asking him to land an agreement “within a reasonable period” — royal code for “hurry up” — and to report back on his progress Nov. 4.

For De Wever, the situation poses a delicate dilemma.

The party president of the Flemish nationalists is also the mayor of the large port of Antwerp — Belgium second biggest city — where he maintained a comfortable winning cushion over other parties on Sunday.

He describes the choice between staying in Antwerp and leading Belgium as a tussle between his heart and his head. As a Flemish nationalist, stepping up to lead the country is a difficult circle to square. Even as he was appealing to voters last spring to become prime minister, he said that “as a person, I’m not looking forward to becoming prime minister. Really, I am dreading it immensely.”

Despite those reservations, he’s now precariously close to the job, leading negotiations for the formation of a national government between his N-VA party, the centrists of the CD&V and Les Engagés, the French-speaking liberals of the Reformist Movement (MR), and Dutch-speaking socialist party Vooruit.

Brussels’ worst nightmare?

From a European perspective, a Flemish nationalist prime minister — on paper at least —is Brussels’ worst nightmare. What would happen to the European institutions, and NATO, if their host country were governed by a man who has been bashing Belgium his entire political career?

And then there is his political affiliation.

De Wever’s Flemish nationalists hail from the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists in the European Parliament, which would mean one less leader around the European Council table who is linked to the centrist forces that backed Ursula von der Leyen to stay on as European Commission president.

So why, then, does nobody seem too panicky?

In the Belgian elections, De Wever surprisingly defeated the far-right Vlaams Belang, which had been leading the polls for months. The anti-immigration party wants to turn Flanders into an independent breakaway state — risking months, or possibly years of political instability.

So on June 9, the country’s elite was relieved, rather than terrified, by the prospect of De Wever as Belgium’s next leader rather than an ultra-hardliner.

De Wever is far from being able to take a breather, though. He faces a choice that will define his political legacy: statesmanship, or ideology?

Dick of the year

Explaining De Wever’s political success to a non-Belgian (or even a French-speaking Belgian) is challenging. He is cynical, arrogant, and easily outsmarts everyone around the table. He’s also bad at making polite small-talk and has mild germophobia, making campaigns extra challenging.

How, then, has he proven so durable? He has been party president since 2004, remarkable in an age when most politicians rise and fall faster than the stock market.

“You could see that he was a man who picks up things very quickly, who reacts very fast,” said Geert Bourgeois, who founded the party and handed the reins to De Wever two decades ago. “Bart is a chess player. I could tell he had a lot of capacities. He doesn’t just have the strategic vision, but he’s also a good debater.”

In those two decades, De Wever managed to transform the N-VA from a fringe party with just one elected member in parliament to the biggest political force in the country. Throughout that period, he became and remained one of the country’s most popular politicians.

In the early days of his career, a wildly popular TV quiz show catalyzed his bigger public breakthrough. Belgium got to know the intellectual who was obsessed with ancient history, but at the same time indulged in Burgundian cuisine (De Wever weighed 142 kilograms at the time) and was razor sharp and quick-witted.

He had a legendary response to being awarded maximum points after naming various animal species on the quiz show: “You can’t have shit thrown at your head all day without learning something from it.”

He had a point. It’s not just that De Wever has a love-hate relationship with Belgium: The country also has a love-hate relationship with him. In a poll he once won both “Politician of the year” and “Dick of the year.”

While deeply respected by his political opponents for his intellect and his debating skills, he is also known to be ice cold when required.

“He can be brutal in his strategy. As a historian he likes to read about the battles of Julius Caesar, who was unrelenting,” said Egbert Lachaert, a former party president of the Flemish liberals of Open VLD and a counterpart with whom De Wever had a long, public falling-out.

Lachaert stressed that once you get into De Wever’s bad books, “you’ll feel it, and he’ll proceed to destroy his opponents.”

De Wever once referenced a famous quote from former U.S. President Harry Truman, that “if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” The same seems true in Belgium.

Politically, De Wever transformed the N-VA from a one-issue movement to a party with a far broader appeal, economically to the right and culturally conservative, labelling it the “Flemish CSU” in a reference to the conservative Bavarian Christian Democrats.

“He’s a conservative, always has been and always stayed one,” said Karl Drabbe, who published some of De Wever’s books and has roots in the Flemish movement.

De Wever’s latest book, “On Woke,” is branded as a pamphlet “against the war of self-destruction that a good part of the intellectual élite is waging against modern, Western society.”

While his conservative ideology has remained steadfast over the years, De Wever’s preferred means to achieve greater Flemish autonomy has evolved. To transform the N-VA into a governing party, De Wever had to think more in terms of power, Drabbe said, and of trying to change the country from within.

Eventually, this led to a massive power grab.

The N-VA has led the Flanders regional government for a decade and was part of the Belgian governing coalition between 2014 and 2018.

This allowed the Flemish nationalists to spread their influence — not just within key Flemish positions such as the Port of Antwerp but also in top Belgian economic institutions such as the National Bank or in Belgian diplomacy. De Wever’s role in Antwerp gave him a platform to style himself as a strong right-winger who is tough on crime, domestic terror networks and drugs.

That deliberate, step-by-step power accumulation has a very different feel from the provocative De Wever who in 2005 drove 12 trucks loaded with fake money to the southern, French-speaking region of Wallonia — just to make the point that Flanders was bleeding too much money toward its poorer neighbor.

De Wever has a great talent for reinventing himself, said Bart Maddens, a political scientist at the Catholic University of Leuven.

“He grew up as a rebellious figure, with a lot of wit,” Maddens said. “Then he gradually transformed into more of a statesman with a more presidential allure.”

What about Flemish independence?

Throughout that climb to power, however, De Wever has failed to deliver on his most important pledge: more Flemish autonomy, which would ultimately lead to Flemish independence.

“It is an evangelical certainty in my mind that it is done with Belgium,” De Wever said in an interview with De Tijd. “History has a direction and it cannot be reversed. There were really only two other countries in Europe like Belgium: Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Two of the three are already down the drain.”

Despite his political pragmatism, the Flemish cause is deeply engrained in his politics and his family history. His father put a membership card of the Flemish nationalist party that preceded the N-VA in De Wever’s diaper shortly after his birth. His brother Bruno is one of the most renowned historians on Flemish nationalism. (Bruno De Wever declined a request for comment for this story. Bart De Wever himself is declining all interviews not to jeopardize the government negotiations.)

“De Wever and his party have gone a long way,” said Wouter Beke. Beke, a current member of the European Parliament, was party president for the Flemish Christian Democrats between 2010 and 2019, often negotiating with his N-VA-counterpart over the years. Beke and De Wever, who got to know one another during their previous academic careers at the same university, always shared a deep mutual respect.

Beke noted, in particular, that the party was now more ready to adapt to the country’s political realities. He made particular reference to the epic coalition negotiations of 2010, when N-VA bigwig Jan Jambon said he would rather have “no agreement than a compromise.”

Things are now very different.

De Wever saw the June Belgian elections as a “now-or-never” moment for his political lifelong goal. The only way to get things moving, he argued during the campaign, was to take the highest office himself.

“There is great frustration within the N-VA that despite electoral successes, the party has never been able to achieve anything in terms of state reform,” said Maddens, the political scientist.

“That is beginning to weigh both on De Wever personally and on N-VA in general. They don’t want to miss this historic opportunity or go down in history as the Flemish-nationalist party that has been unable to achieve anything in terms of autonomy.”

But the 53-year-old historian is now facing an almost impossible conundrum. To achieve greater Flemish autonomy, he needs to win round his French-speaking counterparts, which risks leading to years of political chaos.

For years, Francophone politicians have prided themselves on not negotiating with a man whom they see as the devil. However, now that the far-right Vlaams Belang has gained ground in Flanders, De Wever almost looks mainstream in Francophone Belgium as well.

Still, while accepting him as the Belgian prime minister would work, they aren’t keen on negotiating another institutional reform.

That means De Wever has been negotiating for months with the Flemish Christian Democrats, the Flemish socialists and the French-speaking liberals to set up a center-right government to get the country’s derailing finances in order. In parallel, that new government would lay the groundwork for more regional autonomy, albeit in small steps.

Inevitably, this risks kicking the can down the road when it comes to additional Flemish autonomy. It also provides easy ammunition to the far-right opposition: Is De Wever again giving up his principles in return for power?

“Those who try to drain the Belgian swamp risk, above all, drowning in it themselves,” said Tom Van Grieken, the party president of Vlaams Belang.

The N-VA strongman is well aware of that risk, said Belgian officials briefed on his thinking, who were not allowed to speak freely because of the government negotiations.

It was no coincidence that De Wever started his victory speech on June 9 with the Latin tag ad astra per aspera: Through adversity to the stars.

Just getting to where he is now has been hard enough for De Wever, but the adversity to come could be worse. He will be wondering whether he can endure a potentially reputation-shredding federal premiership to reach the heights of Flemish independence.

Camille Gijs contributed reporting.

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