Peasants' son tries to unite a nation

Elio Di Rupo. Photo / AP

They do things differently in Belgium. This week, the country finally chose a Prime Minister after 541 days without a government, smashing all previous European and world records.

Elio Di Rupo, sworn in by King Albert II on Wednesday, is the first openly gay leader of a European Union country.

Yet more startling in Belgian terms, he is the first French speaker since 1979 to lead the country, in which 60 per cent are Dutch-speaking.

He is a left-wing Prime Minister in a country that votes heavily to the right. But there is something else atypical and characteristically Belgian about his elevation.

Although Italy and Greece responded to the financial crisis by suspending democracy and appointing technocratic leaders, in Belgium the crisis has been shocked back into life after the federal democracy had been in a quarrelsome coma for nearly 18 months.

A severe downgrade last month by the ratings agency Standard & Poor's finally obliged Belgium's perennially squabbling, linguistically split political classes to agree on a new national government. How long that Government will last is open to question.

Di Rupo, 60, has already been called the weakest Prime Minister in Belgian history. He is a flamboyant, atheist, socialist Francophone fond of large, red, floppy bow ties. At first glance, he does not seem to be the man best placed to reconcile conservative Catholic, Dutch-speaking suburban voters with the federal Belgian Government - or the concept of Belgium itself.

His coalition has only a minority of MPs from the wealthy Flemish north.

He speaks fluent French, Italian and English (as a chemistry graduate of Leeds University) but can scarcely speak Dutch, the country's majority language.

Bart de Wever, head of a moderate Flemish separatist party that topped the polls in the last elections in June last year, said: "My Nigerian cleaning lady who has been in Belgium for two years speaks better Dutch than Elio."

A poll this week showed that just 29 per cent of Flemish people have confidence in him. Support among French-speakers from Brussels and the economically struggling south was 69 per cent.

On the other hand, Di Rupo is a wily fighter and survivor, a man who has made his way to the shaky pinnacle of Belgian political life from the most unpromising possible beginnings.

Di Rupo was born in 1951 in a squatters' camp for Italian immigrants in Morlanwelz. His mother and father, landless peasants with six other children, had headed north to find work.

When Di Rupo was a year old, his father died and his three brothers were put in an orphanage while he and his three sisters were raised by their mother on the equivalent of $11.50 a month. "My life is a fairytale," he told journalist Francis Van de Woestyne in a biography. "You could not make it up. With nothing, my mother gave us happiness. On celebration days, she would buy sandwiches that she cut in two."

Colleagues on the Francophone left say they are a little tired of his tales of "divided sandwiches" and his parents' "solitary, wooden suitcase". Opponents are more generous. "Di Rupo is the American dream, Belgian version," said Vincent van Quickenborne from the Flemish liberal party Open VLD.

Di Rupo, a brilliant student,became a doctor of chemistry before switching to politics in 1982. Although initially mocked as the "little macaroni", he become mayor of Mons, on the Belgian-French border, a Euro MP, national Education Minister and Vice-Prime Minister of the Walloon region.

Since 1999, he has led the powerful Francophone Socialist party, one of the Europe's most unreconstructed. In 1996, as Belgium was torn apart by the Dutroux paedophilia scandal, Di Rupo faced wrongful claims that he had had sex with an underage boy. In doing so, he openly declared his sexuality for the first time.

In the biography he remembered being pursued down a street by a pack of journalists. He told how one had shouted: "They say you're a homosexual."

He recalled: "I turned around and replied: Yes, so what?' I will never forget that moment. They were so surprised by my reply that they stopped pushing one other."

Colleagues and opponents say his political skills, long doubted by the Belgian media, emerged during the 18 months of talks that finally produced a Government this week.

It was largely his insistence and eye for a possible compromise that produced an agreement, settling a dispute about political rights for Francophones in the mainly Dutch-speaking suburbs around Brussels.

Van de Woestyne says: "Belgians are very grateful for his efforts to resolve the government crisis, which has lasted too long. If he's not quite regarded as the country's saviour, he is seen as the man who ended the crisis."

Forming a Belgian government is hard enough but running one at a time of world economic crisis is something else. Di Rupo's Francophone and Flemish coalition has committed itself to budget cuts to stop the country (which has accumulated debt equivalent to 90 per cent of GDP) going the way of Ireland, Portugal and Greece.

Even more difficult will be the enactment of reforms to ease the perennial tensions between French and Dutch-speaking communities.

For the first time, a majority of mostly right-leaning voters in Belgium's Flemish north say they favour greater autonomy up to and possibly including a division of the country. But can they be persuaded to believe in a Belgian future by a gay left-winger of Italian extraction who can scarcely speak Dutch?

Out to govern: Other gay political trailblazers

Out to govern: Other gay political trailblazers

Johanna Siguroardttir
The world's first openly gay head of government, 69, is a former flight attendant and trade unionist who became Iceland's Prime Minister in 2009 after the collapse of her country's banking sector. Shehas been in a civil union since 2002.

Barney Frank
The Harvard-educated Democrat congressman represented Massachusetts for six years before coming out in 1987. He became the most prominent gay politician in Washington. Frank, 71, said last week he would retire from Congress in 2013.

Anna Grodzka
The 57-year-old, previously a man named Krystoff, became Poland's first transsexual MP last month. Her election campaign had to overcome prejudice in a conservative country still dominated by the Catholicchurch.

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