Liberals/Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Parties chiefly appeal to businesspeople, property owners, shopkeepers, and the self-employed, in general. In the terms generally used in English-speaking countries, Belgian liberals would be called "moderate conservatives", "fiscal conservatives" and "social liberals".
There are two Liberal parties, formed along linguistic lines: The Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (VLD) who opened up their ranks to Volksunie and CD&V defectors some years ago, managed to break the dominance of CD&V over Belgian politics in 1999. The VLD is currently headed by Alexander De Croo. The Mouvement Réformateur (MR) on the Francophone side is headed by Charles Michel. The MR is a federation composed of the Christian-democratic split-off, MCC and the Brussels-based FDF which is particularly strong electorally in Brussels.
Recently, the Flemish liberal party faced several high-ranking elected officials breaking away in order to found new "right-liberal" parties: MEP Ward Beysen (Liberaal Appèl, LA), senator Leo Govaerts (Veilig Blauw), senator Hugo Coveliers (VLOTT), VLD board member Boudewijn Bouckaert (Cassadra vzw) and senator Jean-Marie Dedecker (Lijst Dedecker, LDD).
Read more about this topic: Political Parties In Belgium
Famous quotes containing the words liberals, liberal and/or democrats:
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—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“But alas! I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises, that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.”
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