Belgium on sale on eBay, what to do with the political limbo?

This is great stuff.

Someone was selling Belgium on eBay according to Yahoo!News (thanks Peter). The announcement said:

“For Sale: Belgium, a Kingdom in three parts … free premium: the king and his court (costs not included). “

Supposedly the person behind wanted to attract attention and prove that Belgium was a country worth a decent amount of cash. When it reached 10 million euros, it was taken off by the webmasters.

This of course related to the frustrating political situation in which Belgium finds itself since the elections. It has been more than 100 days and the country still doesn’t have a government. Yves Leterme, the Flemish PM-to-be, has given up his tries to form a coalition government with the Walloons and now the state is in a political limbo. Actually, there are not many news coming recently.

There are some sensible solutions to it via a change of the electoral system. Nowadays Belgians can, in almost all cases, only vote for candidates from their part of Belgium (Wallonia, Flanders, Bruxelles) and not for candidates from other regions. The votes thus get obviously regionalised. There is a good argument in favour of a possible change elaborated by Certain ideas about Europe, based on the paper from the Pavia Group. It suggests to run candidates on the federal level, instead of the exclusively regional.

Sounds common sense? Welcome to the art of Belgian politics.