Gay, socialist and born in a squatters' camp - meet the new PM of Belgium

[trf_chan]

Gay, socialist and born in a squatters' camp - meet the new PM of Belgium: Elio Di Rupo is the unlikely outsider chosen to lead after 18 months of political deadlock

Comments

[velvetunicorn]

Interesting. I can imagine living in a country with no leader for 18 months. That sounds absolutely exhausting. It would make me so anxious. I hope that under his leadership, Belgium does well. I have no idea about Belgian politics so I don't know about him personally but it's always nice to see diversity at the top.

[heleentje]

Belgium has several regional governments next to the federal government, and those worked fine, so actually life more or less went on like usual. I personally didn't notice any big upsets in daily life during the last year-and-a-half. It's also not the first time we've been without federal government for an extended period of time (in 2007 it took almost 200 days), so people mostly joke about it and move on with their lives.

Personally I'm glad Di Rupo became PM instead of de Wever. I've never been a fan of the latter and the last 540 days didn't exactly change my opinion on him.

[velvetunicorn]

Thank you for this. That is very good to know! It's hard to know how things really are when you're not very familiar with the government systems. I should educate myself on this.

[age_of_green]

I want him to be president here in the USA. Of course, that will be the day to cue the flying pigs.

Has anything else been posted on Belgium having no PM for 18 months? I'm amazed that they kept things together as well as they have.

[fenris_lorsrai]

I think there's a few back under the belgium tag. I think something was posted when they broke the record for longest time without a government.

[crossfire]

Scientist, socialist, and openly gay. And is it just me or does he look kind of like Carl Sagan?

And ngl I love his bowtie. Not every man can rock one of those. Bowties are cool.

Crushing so hard rn. *fans self*

[romp]

Your reaction is pretty cute! (and I'm amused because my son just discovered Carl Sagan and wants to be him)

[jettakd]

He sounds like a cool person. Hopefully, he can be what Belgium needs in a leader.

[sephystabbity]

I'm so excited to hear, let's hope this works out for Belgium and that the PM proves the naysayers wrong! :D