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Poll gain for Belgium's far right | Poll gain for Belgium's far right |
(about 13 hours later) | |
A far-right party in Belgium's northern Flanders region has made sweeping gains in local elections, while the country's governing party suffered badly. | |
The anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party won about 20% of the vote in Dutch-speaking Flanders. | |
However it was knocked from first to second place in its traditional heartland - the city of Antwerp. | |
In the past other parties have formed coalitions to keep Vlaams Belang out of power, even where it has come first. | |
They are expected to try to do the same again. | |
Protest vote | Protest vote |
Vlaams Belang campaigns on a platform of independence for Flanders, the richer Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and an anti-immigration integrationist stance towards minorities. | Vlaams Belang campaigns on a platform of independence for Flanders, the richer Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and an anti-immigration integrationist stance towards minorities. |
But it is perhaps primarily a place for the protest vote, for people to register their dissatisfaction with the long-standing political status quo, says the BBC's Jonny Dymond in Brussels. | |
Guy Verhofstadt acknowledged the scale of his party's defeat | |
The status quo seems to be unpopular at the moment, he adds, with the far right making what it calls "spectacular" gains. | |
The lead party of the national coalition - the Liberal Democrats - has seen its share of the vote slip away. | |
"This is a landslide victory," said Vlaams Belang party chairman Frank Vanhecke. | |
However, there was some consolation for the mainstream parties in Antwerp, the home of Vlaams Belang, where it suffered its only significant setback. | |
Even though it increased its share of the city's vote to 33.5%, it was overtaken by the Socialists, inspired by their popular mayor Patrick Janssens, who made dramatic gains to 35.3%. | |
"It shows that it is possible to stop Vlaams Belang with a positive project," Mr Janssens said. | |
Socialists suffer | |
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt acknowledged the scale of his party's defeat, with less than a year to go before parliamentary elections. | |
"The average trend of the Flemish Liberal Democrats is not so good," he said. | |
"We must acknowledge that the government has had a few bad months and we know that whoever leads faces the most fire." | |
Meanwhile, in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium, Mr Verhofstadt's coalition partners, the Socialists, lost ground badly. | |
The party, embroiled in a corruption scandal, was forced to give up seats in the cities of Charleroi, Namur, and Liege. | |
The Christian Democrats were the biggest winners there. |
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