In Belgium, “the French presidential election reveals our cultural proximity and estrangement”
April 10, 2022. First round of the French presidential election. The opportunity to note, once again, the cultural gap between Flemings and French speakers: because if the French-speaking media owe a lot of French elections, the Flemish media, for their part, are largely uninterested in it. Similarly, many French-speaking Belgians have won a candidate in the election, or at the very least boiling down to the question “And if I were French, who would I vote for?” “.
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No wonder, of course, when language and culture are linked. French-speaking Belgians, therefore, are largely steeped in French culture: literature, press, cinema: we feed largely on the production of our big neighbour. The Flemings of Belgium, for their part, are quite logically more oriented towards their Dutch neighbour. But the comparison has its limits: in fact, the Netherlands is not the “large” neighboring country embodied by France for French-speakers: 17 million Dutch people are certainly more than our 6 million Flemings, but not enough to impress a population which, moreover, thinks of itself as a nation. On the other hand, the 5 million French speakers are very little compared to the 68 million French people.
Moreover, the French presidential election exerts an undeniable attraction because of the personification of the debate: while we vote above all for parties, the French elect candidates. Let’s face it: it’s more readable, easier to follow, even if the presidential campaign sometimes suddenly resembles a tournament that is both a chess championship and a bad reality TV show, where at the elimination of most of the candidates is followed by a battle of the leaders, so that in the end only one remains. And the winner is…
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Only one, an elected president, at the head of the country for five years! This is strange, even unthinkable, for our small country, beyond our linguistic differences and for the same reason, at least in part: how can we agree on a head of state who would have the fault , besides being too left for some and too right for others, not being of the right linguistic sex? No, definitely, we cannot imagine a system other than coalitions, with guaranteed representation of minorities and infinite balancing exercises as delicate as they are risky. Also we never have a real great winner, nor moreover a loser: everyone can boast, in our country, of holding a parcel of power somewhere, and the Head of State has, it is said, , power other than symbolic!
“May you, French friends, continue to block what is the very negation of the republican idea, this precious asset that I so often happen to envy you. »
Also, the French elections reveal both our cultural proximity and our estrangement, and they explain this game of differences in which we often seem to indulge in order to define ourselves: yes, we French-speaking Belgians are both very similar to you, French friends, and differentiated from you. And in us live the two tendencies: the one which tends to cultivate this singularity, to be proud of our specificities and to be annoyed by the excessive importation of debates which it qualifies as “Franco-French”; and the one who, on the contrary, is eyeing the French Republic with an interest tinged with admiration.
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But we have so far retained a precious specificity: an anecdotal, if not non-existent extreme right. Undoubtedly, this is unfortunately due more to the absence of a charismatic leader within the French-speaking extreme right, than to our deep attachment to democracy. Nevertheless: train yourselves, French friends, to continue to block what is the very negation of the republican idea, this precious good that I so often happen to envy you.