BELGIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATS SUFFER MAJOR DEFEAT
Brussels -
MAY 24 -- The Social Christian (Catholic) and Social Democratic parties constituting Belgium's coalition government suffered a major defeat in yesterday's general election. The final figures on the popular vote are not yet available, but in the Chamber of Deputies, which has 212 seats, the Catholics fell from 96 to 77 seats and the Social Democrats from 84 to 64. For the Social Democrats this was the heaviest defeat in their 72 years of participation in parliamentary activity.
The main gainers in the election were the Party for Liberty . and Progress (Liberals) which increased its seats from 20 to 48 and the Volksunie (Flemish nationalists) which won 12 seats as compared with 5 in the 1961 election. Both are rightist bourgeois parties,
The clear-cut shift to the right registered by the over-all — election results is ascribable primarily to the policy of capitulation followed by the reformist leaders in their coalition with the Catholic party. Following the great general strike of 1960-61, the Social Democratic party in the spring 1961 elections recorded the ~ highest vote in its history. This mandate to push forward along the road of socialism was betrayed by the Social Democratic leaders, They: joined in’a bourgeois coalition’ government with the Catholics. This could only disorient and demoralize the working class, at least the less politically mature sectors, The bourgeois opposition parties capitalized on the situation by advancing a clever demagogic platform that promised everything to everybody. The demagogy proved successful at the polls. As always, the opportunism of the leaders of the working class paved the way for a defeat.
In a general swing to the right, in which the Social Demo cracy loses seats, the parties to the left also generally suffer. However, this did not occur on May 23 due to the fact that among the most conscious layers of the Belgian working class there was a shift to the left.
As a result, the Communist party increased its number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies from 5 to 6 and gained two seats in the Senate. The new left socialist party, which has been in existence only a few months, won two seats in the Chamber of Deputies, one in Liége and one in Brussels. A third seat in the south (province of Hainaut) was missed by a few thousand votes. The win- ‘ner there was Robert Moreau, former assistant national secretary of the Belgian Federation of Labor, who ran on a Walloon nationalist platform,
~-'. The vote for the parties of the left is estimated to be nearly double the 1961 figure but they failed to win proportionate
parliamentary representation due to division among their forces.
The pro-Peking Communists in Brussels refused to join the electoral bloc of the pro-Moscow Communists and the new left socialist party. This prevented the bloc from getting a second member of parliament in the Belgian capital. In Antwerp the Communist party won an estimated 19,000 votes and Camille Huysmans 15,000. But the 34,000 votes gained no seat. Had all the groupings of the left joined in an electoral bloc, they would have won 10 or 11 seats as: compared to the 8 that were actually chalked up.
With two members of parliament in their first election try, | the new left socialist party registered an encouraging success. The highest votes were recorded in the working-class strongholds of the "red belt" around Liége. This was the only area in the country where the gains of the Communist party and the new left socialist party came close to equaling the losses suffered by the Social Democrats. In these districts they received 20% of the vote; in one case, 29%.
The left socialist member of parliament from Lidége is Profes-~ sor Frangois Perin of the Parti des Travailleurs Wallons, the less. radical and more nationalist wing of the new party. In Brussels the member of parliament is Pierre Le Gréve of the Union de la Gauche Socialiste and chairman of the Brussels Teachers union. A wellknown figure jn the extreme left of the Brussels Jabor movement, he was the initiator of the Belgian Committee to Aid the Algerian Revolution. He became a target of the terrorists in the service of French colonialism and received a bomb in the mail. Fortunately his wife was suspicious of the package inasmuch as a Liége teacher, participating with Le Gréve in similar help for the Algerian revo~ lution, had been killed a few days earlier by. a bomb when he opened a package sent him through the mail.
BRUSSELS