BELGIUM'S NEW GOVERNMENT -- A FURTHER SHIFT TO THE RIGHT.
By Henri Valin
Brussels:
After a crisis that lasted more than two ‘months, | a- new government was finally formed July 28. It is a coalition between the Christian Social party and the reformist Socialist party like the previous government which suffered a crushing defeat in the general elections May 23, The coalition still commands a broad _majority..in parliament (the two biggest parties in Belgium are involved), but in the House. of Representatives, the coalition is one seat short of a two-thirds, majority.
This technicality is important. inasmuch as the parliament elected May 23 is a Constituent Assembly charged with the task of revising Belgium's 135-year-old constitution and introducing some voting safeguards in favor of the Walloons (who speak French). This is the first parliament.in which the Flemings (who speak Flemish, a Germanic language); hold an absolute majority of seats. To revise the constitution, however, a two-thirds majority is required. Consequently, the coalition's aim cannot be achieved unless someone in the opposition is won over to the government's side. ; . i"
Needless to say, the coalition parties are not. looking to the left for this additional vote. but _to the right. They tried wooparty which was recently rebaptised as the NParby of Freedom and. Progress," ) The maneuver failed, but the coalition is still fish ing in the same place for the extra vote. All this has signified a further shift to the right as compared with the last Catholic- Socialist government headed by Théo Lefévre which was a typical — example of a "center-left" formation in the Italian style.
The shift to the right is apparent not only in the general political atmosphere of parliament; it is also apparent in the composition of the cabinet and the official.declaration read by Prime Minister Pierre Harmel before the House on July 29. Several direct representatives of big business and the worst reaction, absent in the previous government, have been brought into the new coalition in the most conspicuous manner. The conservative Catholic leader Gaston Eyskens, who was prime minister from 1958. to 1961 and against whose hated government the workers launched the general strike of December 1960-January 1961, is vice-chairman of the present coalition! The new minister of justice, Pierre Wigny, after twenty-four hours in’office, sent a circular letter to the police department drawing attention to the fact that it is illegal for foreigners to stage political demonstrations in Belgium and calling on them to enforce this law strictly. (Belgium has seen a séries of demonstrations organized by Spanish and Greek workers to express solidarity with political struggles undertaken by the toil-
ing masses in their respective countries.)
To agree to a new coalition government further to the right than the last one was a bitter pill for the Socialist party leaders after the stunning defeat they suffered at the polls (the vote for the Socialists dropped 25%). After much hesitation and haggling, they finally decided at a congress held July 24-25 to participate in the new coalition, The majority in favor of swallowing the poisonous pill was the smallest since the end:of World War II, a bare 63%, Significantly, 60% of the mandates held by the Walioon federations, generally more to the left than the Flemish, were cast against the’ coalition. This included the Liége and Charleroi federations. Due to this, the large working-class federations of the Socialist party in Wallonie are not represented in the cabinet, and the Liége minister Fernand Dehousse was publicly reprimanded by his federation for joining the government.
In the opinion of the Paris daily Le Monde, the Social Democratic leaders, by joining the new coalition government, created-: favorable conditions for a "guerrilla war" against them by both the dissident left socialists and the Walloon nationalists. It. was to counter this possibility that the leaders of the large Walloon federations voted against the coalition.
But they put up only a hesitant fight at the congress without any firm basis in principles and without offering an alternative policy. The same can be said of the attempt of a few centrist members of parliament in the Socialist party, headed by Ernest Giinne, to launch a "new left" inside the party. (The militant left win was arbitrarily expelled in a witch-hunt campaign last December, In a manifesto, these centrists openly accepted the reformist position that socialism can be won in a capitalist society through gradual reforms, a position they would have repudiated in the days when they collaborated with the weekly La Gauche before they capitulated to the Socialist party bureaucrats last January.
In fact, as is made clear in the official declaration of the Harmel cabinet, the whole orientation of the reformists is based on the hope of continuation of the "boom! and full omployment through international capitalist "prosperity." - The turn of the economic situation in Italy, France, Japan “and now probably in Britain, too, shows that this faith lacks any. firmer basis in reality than miracles of other kinds.
ECONOMIC