In Belgium, the designations of spouses do not date from that of Lucie Demaret, and not either from the Onkelinx-Uyttendaele couple. Rather, they date even the day before yesterday, before Emile Vandervelde’s wife even. Little story of power couples to the Belgian.
The sovereign designation From Lucie Demaret to the chairmanship of the board of directors of the Office of Birth and Childhood by the President of the MR, Georges-Louis Bouchez, caused a scandal. It must be said that Lucie Demaret is the companion from Georges-Louis Bouchez. The reforming president replied, with the braver which characterizes him, that there was nothing there which contravenes the traditional prerogatives of a party president. And he was right to think, but it was wrong to say that namedfrom any authority, his spouse to a remunerated mandate, at the expense of another woman on her own party, was a feminist act. And he was also right to believe that it would be considered in 2025 as legitimate because we have always done like that.
Because indeed, in Belgium, we have always done like that, and that is precisely what annoyed in this perpetuation of our old values.
The history of political Belgium indeed is full of stories of nepotism, the sons of, the daughters of and the children of have often been helped to meet their good electoral fortunesand each sub-region is teeming with anecdotes of placed parents, supported friends and adulterous promotions. THE “Who Kette who?” is a reading key which are fond of but without saying the observers and some of the actors too much. This key, which has always had its effectiveness, still turns to obsession with certain actors, we will not quote them. But their infinite litany of gossip is now based on reasons, a background of possible sociological observations, and on the range of mounted entrees genres. Formerly it was quite unilateral and of any duration.
The woman behind any big man
The tradition of gossip on policies spouses is as old as the phallocracy reigning over our societies. In the nineteenthe A century, a young Catholic parliamentarian, Gustave Vandersmissen, was the laughing stock of Belgium. From the beginnings of our showbiz, his wife, the singer Alice Renaud, had notorious connections with Félicien Rops in particularand the press laughed a lot, until the day of the assassination, by the parliamentarian, of his wife, where the general sneer became embarrassed.
Political power, consecrated by male and censitaire suffrage, being monopolized by the richest males, It is mainly joints who, in the XIXe century but also all along the XXeeven after the universal suffrage and the relative feminization of the ruling classes, were suspected of taking advantage of the powerful support of their influential husband.
One man in particular, a liberal, played this macho shot of the woman who is behind any great man. Walthère Frère-Orban headed several governments in the 19th centurye century. He was undoubtedly the most powerful man in Belgium for a few decades, and defended a so -called doctrinaire line of fierce opposition to any improvement in popular classes, and especially to any widening of suffrage. But Walthère brother, civil servanthad a large part of his political ascent to his wife, Claire-Hélène Orban, to whom he took the surname to please good society. The Orban were indeed very very large industrialists and bankers whose heritage allowed the son to become a voter. Because only the rich voted at the time and only the very rich were for example eligible for the Senate. The fact remains that, from the Orban couple, Belgium heard a lot about Walthèrewhose liberals today are not so proud. They quickly preferred Charles Rogier to him as the father of the nation or Paul Janson in sincere democrat, but never clear.
The “Who Kette who?” is a reading key which are fond of but without saying the observers and some of the actors too much.
Whether they were electric or not – after the Second World War for the Legislatives -, whether they were eligible or not – after the First World War for Parliaments -, women, even when they were very convincing feminist, have often been reduced to a reported room, sometimes charming, sometimes annoying, of their husband, for the reporters. Sometimes also, they are known to have expanded the horizons of their husband. Emile Vandervelde, the “boss” of the Belgian worker party Until its minorization, in the Mitan of the 1930s, by Paul-Henri Spaak and Henri de Man, would have been initiated into feminism by his first wife, Charlotte Helen Speyer, known as Lalla Vandervelde, Anglo-Belgian, artist and muse, divorced then remarried, with Vandervelde, then divorced with the same. In return, say historians, Emile would have convinced Lalla of the superior virtues of socialism. In any case before their divorce. Vandervelde’s second wife, Jeanne Beeckman, this plus tad Jeanne-Emile Vaderfieldswas more feminist than the name she kept would not say today. At 34, she married the socialist president, 61 years old, in 1927. Emile Vandervelde became Minister of Public Health in 1936, and a controversy is flambé, since it was Jeanne-Emile that Emile chose as chief of staff. Both leave the government when the latter, validated by Spaak and Man, recognizes the Franco government of Burgos. Widowed at the end of 1938, Jeanne-Emile Vandervelde quickly entered the resistance, unlike, moreover, in Spaak and even more at De Man, and will perpetuate the big socialist name by sitting in the Senate until his death in 1963.
The accusations, legitimate or not, of complacency do not know the partisan borders. The left of the left also knows his alleged Thénardier. At the Belgian Communist Party, René Noël, mayor of Cuesmes then alderman of Mons, senator, was certainly useful to his wifeNoëlla Dinant, when she became parliamentary in the 1970s. She was already a very long -standing activist, but finally you understand.
They do not stop at the regional limits either, as the examples of strong men and women deemed to be helped have animated local chronicles. In Charleroi, Jean-Claude Van Cauwenberghe’s wife was deputy director of the Cazier Bois Museum, whose CA was chaired by Jean-Claude Van Cauwenberghe.
In Liège and in its region, in the Red Bastions, in Seraing or at Ans, the promotions that carried and the relegations imposed by the Daerden, Mathot, Happart, and other Moreau were indexed to the torments, sometimes real, invented differently, of their marital life. Willy Demeyer’s partner had first been from Guy Mathot, and that did not led to the Borgieque suspicions. What does not do the assassination of André Cools, 63, married to the civil status and socialist bourgmestre of Flémalle in public life, in front of his partner’s home31 years old, socialist advisor to Flémalle, in Cointe, therefore outside their election land.
In Brussels, the memory of Philippe Moureaux, intractable president of the Brussels Federation of the PS, and Françoise Dupuis, who was at certain times designated in positions that her voices preferably could have refused, remains alive.
The gossip on the spouses of politicians started early in history and were marked by the phallocracy reigning over our societies.
Among the Liberals, as for a late tribute from Lucie Demaret, resident of Ham-sur-hour-Nalinnes but whose party president is Montois, the spouses were not always precisely domiciled where they lived or militated. Hervé Hasquin was politically installed in Silly, Picardy Walloniabut his wife, Michèle Hasquin-Nahum, will be alderman in these names and qualities in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert until 2024. Jean Gol was alderman of Chaudfontaine, in the Liège region, at his unexpected death in September 1995, while her widow, Carine Gol-Lescot, is elected local in Uccle and alderman since 2009. 2000, of Daniel Ducar medid not prevent her spouse Marie-Françoise Nicaise from leading a strong honorable municipal and parliamentary career since Thuin, of which the founder of the MR had been a flamboyant bourgmestre.
«Power couple»
The relative feminization of circles of power brought the bifid figure, less unequal, of the power couplewithout being able to determine which of the two is the most powerful, and sometimes even the wife seems the engine. The long history of Minister Miet Smet and the first Wilfried Martens was hidden during their real years of activity, but it is not sure that the love of the first served the second. We also remember the marriage, as surprising as it is poorly profitable, emanating from opposite benches from the Parliament, between the socialist Hennuyère Sophie Péciaux and the Liberal Louvaniste Rik Daems.
Laurette Onkelinx is in this respect doubly exemplary of a female empowerment, since her first spouse advised For decades of socialist firmswhile his second husband, the lawyer and constitutionalist Marc Uyttendaele, frequented all the more the circles of the socialist power that his wife weighed there.
More recently, the promotion of a socialist spouse by a PS wife has flopped: Ludivine Dedonder, who nevertheless made an offensive campaign to the members of the party office, failed to convince them to appoint his companion, Pierre-Olivier Delannois, as a co-opted senator. Certain macho bad guys, more numerous than what they claim, especially at the boulevard of the emperor, even attributed the defeat of Tournaisien to activism, described as Lourdaud, de la Tournaisienne. While she did nothing but generations of male predecessors accomplished successfully.
