Belgians go to polls

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33480, 11 March 1974, Page 13

Belgians go to polls

(H.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

BRUSSELS, March 10.

Belgians will vote today to choose the country’s twenty-second Government in 30 years.

About 1200 candidates are contesting all 212 seats in the National Assembly and 106 seats of the 182-member Senate. The rest of the senators will be either co-opted by the elected senators or appointed by provincial councils.

The new Government will be formed as a result of partv strengths in the new Assembly. The expectation is that it will either be a coalition of the Social Chris-

tians, Socialists and Liberals, or the Socialists and Social Christians alone.

The man widely expected to be the next Prime Minister is 51-year-old Mr Leo Tindemans, leader of the Flemish wing of the Social Christians, the most powerful party in the last Assembly.

Mr Tindemans was asked by King Baudouin to form a Government from the remains of the last Cabinet, composed of Social Christians, Socialists, and Liberals, which collapsed on January 19. He failed when the French-language wing of his own party refused to respond to his appeal for support —a measure of the deep-rooted suspicions be- , tween the Dutch-language and French-language sections of the nation.

The inability of the main parties to solve this problem could lead to increased support for the three Federalist parties, which want political power to be quickly switched from the present central Government to autonomous regions.

The three parties—the Flemish Volksunie and the French-language Rassemblement Wallon and its Brussels ally, the Front Democratique des Francophones—had 45 seats in the last Assembly. Almost seven million Belgians are obliged by law to! vote in today’s election, the' tenth since liberation from German occupation in 1944.

No Government is expected to be announced today. Long negotiations between the parties are expected before an administration is chosen.