© BELGIUM
The fact that the Open VLD is putting a savings plan of 24 billion euros on the table about 100 days before the elections is “shameless”, according to N-VA chairman Bart De Wever. “As if they did it for the sake of it. That 24 billion is the amount of the budgetary slippage of the De Croo government itself,” it said in ‘The seventh day’.
Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 1:28 PM
De Wever refers to the statements of Paul Magnette in ‘The appointment on Friday’. In it, the PS chairman blocked possible savings in health care or social security. Magnette mainly sees “margin” in a series of new taxes. According to De Wever, Magnette is simply laughing at the Flemish liberals. “De Croo itself has said that as the seventh party in the majority you risk being wiped out. Magnette has now wrung that mop in their faces,” De Wever said.
“People’s Fraud”
But in addition to the PS and the PTB/PVDA, Flemish parties such as Groen and Vooruit also propose higher contributions from the (super) rich. De Wever dismisses these proposals as “popular deception”. According to De Wever, these taxes on the rich always start with the rich. “But the rich are not going to pay that and then they end up in the middle class. These are the people who save, work and do business or in another word: Flemish,” says De Wever.
While Flemish Prime Minister Jan Jambon once again stirred up the debate about a possible collaboration between N-VA and Vlaams Belang, De Wever repeated in ‘The seventh day’ that he believes the discussion is “irrelevant”. “Federally, Vlaams Belang will not participate anyway. Whether they are in the Flemish government or not, that will not make the difference once federal Vivaldi II has left,” says De Wever. “I don’t feel related to that party at all, and certainly not at the Flemish level. Everything they say, I’m pretty much against.”
De Wever and his party want to become “incontournable” especially at the federal level. In short: it must become mathematically impossible to form a federal government without N-VA and without Vlaams Belang. De Wever calls on voters to vote not only with their gut, but especially with their mind. A vote for Vlaams Belang is in any case a wasted vote federally, he says.