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Far-Rightists Post Gains in Belgian Local Elections
Early results from Sunday's local elections in Belgium showed that the far-right Vlaams Bloc took about 10 percent of the votes in its power base in the northern half of the country.
In Antwerp, the Vlaams Bloc (Flemish Bloc), which campaigns against immigration and is in favor of independence for the Dutch-speaking northern half, won 33 percent of the votes, up 5 percent from its result in the last local polls in 1994.
The win enables the bloc to gain 20 seats in the 55-seat city council of Antwerp, Belgium's second largest city, arousing concerns of an extreme-right revival in the country.
The incorporation into the governing coalition in Austria of the far-right Freedom Party has led to a seven-month-long joint political boycott by Austria's 14 European Union partners.
Belgium's ruling coalition consolidated its overall lead in the local elections as they hoped, according to early results.
The ruling liberals and socialists hoped their tax cuts and economic growth policies would be rewarded in local balloting as well.
Liberal Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said that the tax cuts, working so well for e liberal-socialist coalition partners in national election campaigns, could also be implemented at municipal levels.
More than seven million Belgians were obliged to vote on Sunday to elect the 589 town councils and provincial governments.
For the first time, European Union citizens living in Belgium took part in the local balloting under an EU legislation that gives them the right to vote.
The impact of the EU voters was felt in eastern Belgium, where residents from neighboring Netherlands helped elect a Flemish majority on the Voeren town council for the first time in 37 years.
Voeren is a Flemish-speaking enclave wedged in the country's French-speaking southern half.
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