Belgium

To the attention of my interested foreign readers.

I shall believe it when I see it, but most observers now think that after almost 200 days of ill will, wrangling, tinkering, pottering, fiddling and dramatic rebounds - with the country sliding close to a political abyss - come Christmas, there just might be a federal government in Belgium.

But beware : "Ceci n'est pas un gouvernement". This is Belgium !! It will be an "interim" caretaker government which will manage urgent affairs of state (the budget ...) exclusively and which will be replaced by a "real" government come Easter 2008.

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How many miracles will need to happen in the next three months to solve all the fundamental problems which prevented the formation of a government for so long ? The most important ingredient, mutual goodwill, has been singularly absent during the last six months. That has to change for the sake of us Belgians, if not for Belgium, but I'm not optimistic that it will. There's a lot of bad blood and open accounts ...