As you all are undoubtedly aware, Belgian elections are upon us. And as always, the cordon sanitaire around Vlaams Belang (radical rightwing) is a hot topic.
It seems there is a similar reticence to work with PvdA (radical leftwing) with all 'mainstream' parties, although no formal agreement. They also get way less votes than Vlaams Belang, usually.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordon_sanitaire_(politics)



How does Pard feel about such a concept?
Should parties with the highest % of votes automatically be included in government formation? Or should parties be free to form coalitions any way they want as long as they can get a majority?

The problem with minority coalitions is that they tend to be very weak, but I don't see why anyone should have a problem with them from a legitimacy point of view. They represent majority opinion.

Some people take umbrage that the likely biggest party would be excluded from any negotiations/coalition in advance.
They are polling to get 25-30% of the Flemish vote atm.

The any way they want part is a bit of a stretch, I dont know about europoors but here in freedom lands there are many compliance regulations to follow when trying to form a legit coalition for government.

As long as those compliance regulations are reasonable and do not bring the barrier of entry too high for the laymen then ya we certainly need some form of regulation.


Doing the petty childish thing like declaring you refuse to cooperate with another party simply because both of you are too immature and lack the decorum to operate within the confines of the political system provokes higher restrictions and is shameful and rather pathetic so its tough

Minority coalitions which find majorities to pass legislation on a case by case basis are perfectly fine.

Cordon Sanitaires, however, are deeply undemocratic since they distort the political decision-making process relative to the composition of parlimament that the voters chose.
Essentially, the push for cordon sanitairs is an attempt to retroactively nullify votes for "wrongthink parties".

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 1 2024 06:04pm

If all small parties, with different ideas, have the common goal of Isolating one big it has a very strong meaning.

We all know how these now big far right parties (sometimes radical left) do: upper hand with populism and even collaborating with hostile foreign powers. When in charge: Democracy is more than at risk.
Only pigs can like this.



Bipartism seems to be cancer these days

It's probably important to note that Vlaams Belang explicitly works towards the abolition of the Belgian state. Moreover quite a few of their proposals are in direct violation of the constitution. The flagrant racism also doesn't help to make them salonfähig.
The cordon is specifically targeted at this party. There've been many coalitions between parties that are ideologically quite different.

Still they get quite a large percentage of the vote in the Flemish part of the country.

Also, they are not excluded from the elections as such. If they ever were to get 51% of the vote, the cordon is useless.



Not sure if calling people pigs is conducive to constructive discussion.

If their goals are unconstitutional, the legal system can try to officially ban the party. But as long as the party isn't banned and eligible to be on the ballot, the democratic principle demands that the political decision-making process is reflective of the parliamentary composition that the voters chose.


A cordon sanitaire still effectively nullifies all the votes which were cast for such a party as long as it stays below the 50%+1 threshold, which is impossible high in countries with proportional representation. Also note that this distortion effect becomes bigger the stronger the ostracized party is. It's well possible that there's a strong parliamentary majority ifor parties from the right-hand side of the political spectrum, yet the cordon sanitaire flips this into a clear majority for left-wing parties among the "permissible", i.e. non-cordoned MPs.


That's essentially the political trap that my own country, Germany, is currently suffering from: in many elections over the past 10 years, the vote of the German voters shifted to the right, yet the resulting government coalitions (and thus the actual policies) shifted to the left because the emergence of a new party (AfD) to the right of the historic mainstream conservatives (CDU) increases the CDU's dependence on Social Democrats or Greens. As long as the CDU adheres to the cordon sanitaire against the AfD, so that even a majority for CDU+AfD doesn't offer them a power option, they are the bitch of the left-wing parties and have to go along with the kinds of policies which strengthen the AfD.

At the end of the day, the cordon sanitaire allows the left-wing parties to pursue their agenda even if a majority of German voters expressly wants a different course. This course keeps strengthening the AfD, a party which is fascist, racist, a threat to democracy and generally super duper dangerous according to the lefties... but they don't care that this status quo feeds the oh-so-dangerous AfD since it also increases their own political power in the short term.

The experience from other European democracies, like e.g. Sweden and the Netherlands, teaches us that such a situation isn't tenable in the long run, but in the meantime, the lefties enjoy an unearned increase in power which has no democratic legitimization.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 2 2024 04:52am

I wrote other things but you didn't like one word and used it to avoid discussion. I will add a very important point no one made here:

By a natural process, realizing the fart right party is dangerously rising, others parties also tend to change their own programs:
Typically on hardening their immigration policies, nationality access, social welfare, etc... The mainstream right wing will "steal" some "ideas" from the extreme right to grab more votes.

So I think "cordon sanitaire" (which is 100% a belgian expression) isn't a big problem, on the contrary: it allows a peaceful adaptation, transition. Unfortunately the threat of far-right populism larglely stays.

whoever supports nonsense like that clearly is not a democrat and the politicians dont understand the meaning of their job

the are voted into office to SERVE the people, their own feelings are irrelevant, whoever they want to work with or not becomes irrelevant

this is not the case anymore and thats why western democracies are mostly fucked

btw, the situations in belgium, france or germany are yet again proof that a democracy can only work in homogenous societies with clear groundrules that everyone respects

now left and right are discussioning what a woman is or if undocumented migrants should be able to enter a country

a cordon sanitaire is anti democratic, period