http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/23/europe/belgium.phpTop politician forgets Belgian national anthem
By Dan Bilefsky
Published: July 23, 2007
BRUSSELS: Belgium was reeling Monday after the country's likely new prime minister was asked on Belgium's National Day to sing the national anthem and inadvertently launched into the French anthem instead.
Asked Saturday by a reporter from a state television channel, RTBF, to sing the Belgian national anthem, "La Brabançonne," on the day commemorating the accession of King Leopold I of Belgium to the throne in 1831, Yves Leterme, a Flemish politician who is struggling to form a coalition government, smiled at the camera and blurted out, "Allons enfants de la patrie" - the first words of "La Marseillaise."
Pressed by the reporter as to whether he really thought those were the words, Leterme, the head of the Flemish Christian Democrat party, replied: "Oh, I don't know." Shortly afterward, he was filmed making a telephone call on his cellphone during a religious service, and, in a final gaffe, he proclaimed in an interview at the independence festivities that his countrymen were, in fact, celebrating "the proclamation of the Constitution."
The missteps by Leterme, who has annoyed Francophones by saying they are too stupid or unwilling to learn Flemish, came as Belgium, divided between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, is struggling to overcome its linguistic divisions in the face of a growing Flemish nationalist movement that supports an independent Flanders.
The public gaffes by the country's likely future leader caused a fury in this country of 10 million people, where last year a hoax report on RTBF proclaiming that Flanders had seceded from Belgium provoked hundreds of frantic calls to the station from Belgians across the world.
Footage of Leterme's fumbled performance was splashed across the Belgian media on Sunday and was circulating on the Internet video site YouTube. Under the headline, "Leterme Sings Wrongly," a story on the front page of the Monday Le Soir newspaper reminded Belgians of the correct opening words of "La Brabançonne."
It is perhaps no small irony that Leterme's efforts to forge a coalition government have stalled so far because French and Flemish politicians cannot agree on how to apportion powers between Belgium's linguistic regions and the federal government.
Some Belgian commentators said Leterme's ignorance was a healthy sign of a nation free of nationalism. "I can understand why some people think it is ridiculous," said Bernard Bulcke, the European correspondent for De Standaard, the leading Flemish newspaper. "But one must remember that Belgium was an artificial construction, we have been invaded throughout our history by other powers and created by them. Maybe it is positive that nationalism doesn't exist in Belgium. So we can't sing the national anthem. Who cares?"
Leterme was unavailable for comment.
