FORMER BELGIAN prime minister Yves Leterme was emerging as favourite last night to return to office as head of government in succession to Herman Van Rompuy, the incoming president of the European Council.
It was Mr Leterme’s resignation last December on foot of a court scandal linked to the bailout of Fortis bank that brought Mr Van Rompuy to power as head of a five-party coalition.
His name cleared since then, Mr Leterme has been foreign minister since July. Having cancelled foreign trips this week, he is reported to have emerged as the favourite to succeed Mr Van Rompuy.
Political talks to oversee a smooth transition to a new leader are being overseen by former premier Wilfried Martens, who was appointed political mediator by King Albert late last Friday.
While talks broke up without definitive agreement at 7pm last night, they were scheduled to resume this morning. While Mr Van Rompuy will not take up his new post until January, the country’s leaders are under pressure to avoid a political vacuum.
The transition is a highly sensitive process in light of the notorious instability of Belgian politics. Given that the current government took nine months to form after elections in 2007, political figures are keen to avoid a repeat at a time of economic weakness.
Mr Martens carried out similar mediation work a year ago in the crisis that brought Mr Van Rompuy to power. Mr Van Rompuy’s consensual style is perceived to have calmed factional tension between the country’s Dutch-speaking majority and the less-wealthy French-speaking community.
Mr Leterme, a leading figure in the centre-right CDV party, has been a popular but divisive leader. He received almost 800,000 personal votes in the 2007 elections, the second-highest total in the country’s electoral history.
However, his pledge during that campaign to devolve more power to regional authorities sparked fears that it could lead to the disintegration of the Belgian state. In particular, French speakers feared that delivering more power to the Dutch-speaking Flanders region would pull Belgium apart.
Ahead of Mr Van Rompuy’s appointment as president of the European Council, Belgian constitutional experts debated whether he could simply resign like any other minister or whether his departure would spell the end of his administration.
It was feared that a renegotiation of the five-party government programme could cause disputes about posts and policy.
