Postergate: Consternation among political parties on available space

It’s election time in Belgium, and that means one thing: Bickering amongst political parties. Now it’s campaign postering causing problems, with Molenbeek at the centre of the fray – today, that is; last week it was Ixelles.

Posters are strictly regulated during campaign season (Belgium’s municipal and provincial elections are on 14 October) and may only be hung on designated boards erected for the purpose. The problem in Molenbeek, according to local representatives of Dutch-speaking nationalist party N-VA, is that the current administration is getting a full half of the available space.

“The elections regulation is not democratic and is discriminatory,” Laurent Mutambayi of N-VA told La Libre Belgique. Apparently the rule in Molenbeek is that the current majority coalition on the city council gets its own board, and all other parties – both French- and Dutch-speaking must share a board.

In a show of unexpected conciliation, Molenbeek’s French-speaking mayor, Françoise Schepmans of reformist party MR, agreed. While she said it was too late to change the regulation for this local election period, she has found a solution. “Since we have not used all the space on our panels, I will inquire as to whether other parties can use that space.”

From too few to none at all

All well and good, but it’s too late to do anything about the situation in Schaerbeek, where parties who already have seats in the council were allowed to hang their election posters two weeks before other parties. And again, they get more space. N-VA was here, too, on the alert, calling the regulation – just passed in June – discriminatory.

According to French-speaking liberal mayor Bernard Clerfayt of Défi, both regulations are no different than they ever were, with the Council of State finding no problem with allocating poster space in proportion to the number of seats a party has.

In terms of the date the posters can go up, Clerfayt responded that the lists of parties who do not have seats are only approved by the judicial system between 17 and 20 September, and parties cannot possibly put up their posters before they are approved.

In Ixelles, meanwhile, it seems that whoever is meant to put up the N-VA’s posters has been slacking off. David Neyskens, who leads the list in the municipality, told Bruzz that “my number two handed in her posters on Wednesday morning and they have still not be hung on the board. If it doesn’t happen today, we will be taking legal action.”

Photo: Thierry Roge/BELGA