BELGIUM: The extreme right wing Vlaams Belang party made gains in Belgium's local elections yesterday, although it was unclear whether it would be able to take control of any town councils or districts.
Initial results released last night show that the party increased its share of the vote in many towns and districts across Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of the country for which Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) seeks independence.
The crucial results for Antwerp's nine districts were delayed due to technical hitches. But opinion polls showed that Vlaams Belang should gain between 33 and 38 per cent of the vote in Belgium's second city.
However, while performing better than in the last local elections held in 2000, when it got 13.4 per cent of the vote, the gains for Vlaams Belang - which campaigns on a platform of anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism - were not as spectacular as in the regional elections in 2004, when the party won almost a quarter of Flemish votes.
The governing Liberal-Socialist coalition led by prime minister Guy Verhofstadt looked on course to lose the most votes when compared to the last local election. Mr Verhofstadt's Liberals lost support across Flanders, while the Socialists, tainted by a corruption scandal in French-speaking Wallonia, also suffered losses.
The election comes just nine months ahead of Belgium's general election and just a few weeks after a scandal over the early release of a foreign prisoner caused serious tensions within the ruling coalition.
The key issue in the local election is whether Vlaams Belang would be able to increase its vote sufficiently to take control of some town councils and districts in Flanders. Despite attracting 24.1 per cent of votes in 2004, the party has been kept out of regional government through an agreement brokered by all the mainstream parties in Belgium called the "cordon sanitaire".
It remained unclear last night whether the results in Antwerp would enable the party to take control of a district. Political commentators had speculated that it was possible older mayors in some districts may consider breaking party discipline to go into coalition with the party.
Cas Mudde, an expert on political extremism at Antwerp University, said it was a good result for Vlaams Belang, but one that suggested its support was levelling out.