Leaders of Belgium's French-speaking parties discussed their policies on pivotal issues such as purchasing power and healthcare during a televised debate on RTL-TVi on Tuesday evening.
The programme entitled 6 presidents face Belgians was an opportunity for the Francophone leaders to weigh in on the issue of possible coalitions after this year's elections.
The programme clearly demonstrated the isolation, on a number of points, of the head of the Mouvement Réformateur (MR), Georges-Louis Bouchez.
Other Francophone leaders blamed him for cost-cutting in the police and justice sectors during former Prime Minister Charles Michel's coalition government, which had included MR, N-VA, as well as the CD&V and Open VLD parties.
Extreme right excluded
However, that did not lead them to rule out the possibility of future partnerships with MR when asked about possible or excluded coalitions. On the other hand, most were against.
"I can see that Mr Bouchez is keen to do it again with the N-VA," commented Socialist Party (PS) leader Paul Magnette. "We absolutely must avoid this, and for that we need strong left-wing parties, and in particular a strong PS."
"We want to make the most progressive alliances, with parties that want to accelerate the ecological, solidarity-based transition," Ecolo's Rajae Maouane said, "excluding the far right".
Bouchez advocates centre-right alliance
The leaders of Les Engagés, Maxime Prévot, and DéFI, François de Smet, rejected both extreme right and left-wing parties, as well as N-VA. They accused some of their French-speaking colleagues of naivety regarding the N-VA’s close ties with the far right party Vlaams Belang.
De Smet also mentioned DéFI's common positions with other parties - with MR on commerce, Ecolo on governance, and the PS on social issues.
Raoul Hedebouw of Belgian Workers Party (PTB-PVDA) did not state a preference for any party in particular. Instead, he emphasised the need for a "real break."
MR's Georges-Louis Bouchez advocated a centre-right coalition. He expressed his interest in two other French-speaking liberal parties, Les Engagés and DéFI, challenging them to clarify their political stance and hinting at the potential for an alternative coalition.
