Bart De Wever: Longtime Separatist To Helm Divided Belgium

Brussels, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 1st Feb, 2025) Bart de Wever made his name as a separatist champion in Belgium's Dutch-speaking north -- and was long accused on the French side of seeking to blow up the country altogether.

Now, after the country's latest bout of tortuous coalition talks finally produced a deal Friday, the longtime scourge of Belgium's Federal government is set to take its helm.

The first Flemish nationalist to claim the role of Belgian prime minister, the mayor of Antwerp and leader of the conservative New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) has long made clear he sees himself destined for greater things.

"This will seem terribly arrogant, but I was born for this -- it's my thing," the 54-year-old confided in a recent behind-the-scenes documentary.

"politics -- when you feel the call, there's no resisting it," he says in the movie, entitled "BDW, political animal."

De Wever was tailed by a camera crew during the run-up to last June's election -- which set the scene for over seven months of laborious talks between his N-VA and four other parties for Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia.

As the unfiltered profile makes clear, De Wever sees much to gripe about in Belgium -- a 200-year-old country born of an uncomfortable melding of two linguistic communities, with melting-pot Brussels providing the third part of the federal puzzle.

Over the years, De Wever has toned down his more radical pleas for independence -- unlike the far-right Vlaams Belang which continues to press for Flanders to break away.

Instead he embraced a more typical -- and electorally palatable -- conservative message built around fiscal discipline, law and order and immigration curbs.

But the dream of Flanders one day seizing hold of its own destiny is never far away.

Underpinning it is the notion -- shared by many on the Flemish side -- of a poorer French-speaking south hooked on public spending and intent on profiting from the hard-earned wealth of the north.

- Panda suit -

In his native Flanders, home to 6.8 of Belgium's 11.8 million people, De Wever made the jump from local politician to public figure after appearing in a popular tv show.

Mayor of Belgium's second city of Antwerp since 2013, these days he is a regular fixture on the small screen -- gamely acting up for the cameras with deadpan asides and schoolboy humour.

In 2014, he donned a panda suit on television in a jab at then-prime minister Elio Di Rupo, who had just laid out the red carpet for a pair of pandas on loan from China to a zoo in French-speaking Wallonia.

"He has a pretty mischievous sense of humour, that can seem innocent but always carries a political message too," said the political analyst Dave Sinardet.

Born in the Antwerp suburbs, De Wever grew up in a family wedded to the Flemish nationalist cause.

His paternal grandfather, a schoolteacher, was jailed at the end of World War II over his involvement with a party that collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation.

De Wever recounts how his own father -- a child at the time -- was scarred by the episode, and developed a "deep hatred of Belgium".

On how he sees Belgium's future, De Wever has left the question artfully open of late -- dodging it as much as possible during talks with his coalition partners from the French-speaking right.

But he maintains that in his view, Belgium is a composite of "two different democracies": one Flanders, the other Wallonia. He would like to see them granted maximum autonomy within a federal system.

- Julius Caesar -

A historian by training, De Wever developed something of a fascination with Roman history, and Julius Caesar in particular -- to the point of peppering speeches with quotes in Latin.

During his reelection campaign in Antwerp, he cast himself as defender of "Rome" -- the empire and its supposed values -- versus "Moscow," the young candidate of the hard-left Workers' Party.

The night he won, he had the eldest of his four children, Hendrik, parade through city hall bearing a wooden standard mounted with a golden eagle: the "aquila" symbolising the ancient legions of Rome.

After his hometown win, De Wever admitted his "heart" would dictate he stay on as mayor -- but his "head" was calling him to the premiership instead.