Yves Leterme gives up

On Saturday, December 1st, Yves Leterme, the Flemish leader, who since June 10th was supposed to form a government, handed his resignation to the king. Discord continues between Flemish and French-speaking parties. Editor in Chief Béatrice Delvaux writes that "an institutional big bang is necessary. There are however a few outstanding formalities that need to be dealt with before French-speaking parties agree to throw themselves into this adventure: first of all, the reality of this crisis needs to be officially recognised by a statesman, in order to check that the current dead-lock is not merely the result of Yves Leterme's arbitrary and patent incapacity. Which is a possibility. This statesman could well be Guy Verhofstadt [outgoing prime minister who has been managing current affairs for the past six months], seeing as he has shown that he is not just on the Flemish side and that he had no intention of forming a government of national destruction."

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