Accomodation In Belgium

Accomodation In Belgium

• Unlike Sri Lanka, the Belgium Government amended their constitution in such a way that it would enable everyone to live together within the same country.
• As per the constitution number of the French and Dutch speaking ministers shall be equal in the central government (compromise by the Dutch speaking people as they were in majority)
• A separate government was formed for the capital city of Brussels and there was equal representation of French and the Dutch speaking people (French compromised as they were in majority)
• State government of the different region were given equal power and equal division of power was maintained between the central and the state government
• A separate community government is formed for every community which is elected by people belonging to one language community
• The community government was formed to promote the cultural, educational and language related issues.
• These arrangements avoided civil strife between the two major communities and a possible division of the country on the linguistic lines.
• When many countries of Europe came together to form European Union, Brussels was chosen as its headquarter.

COMPARISON OF POWER SHARING MODELS OF BELGIUM AND SRILANKA:

IS POWER SHARING DESIRABLE?

In deeply divided societies (divided on ethnic, cultural, religion grounds) equal representation of all the principal groups is called for. Every social group needs a share in the governance to ensure that their interests would be taken care of Power sharing is desirable on two grounds:

PRUDENTIAL REASONS

• Power sharing is good as it reduces the possibilities of tension and conflict between different social groups.
• Power sharing ensures the stability of political order. For example. In Belgium power sharing ensured political stability but not so in Sri Lanka.
• Power sharing avoids bloodshed. For example In Sri Lanka the government did not shared power with the Tamils, which has led to bloodshed.
• If power sharing is not done, in the long run it may lead to disintegration of the nation.
• Unfair use of authority by the majority group is not only oppressive for the minority but it ruins the majority as well sometime.
• Imposing the will of majority community may look line an attractive option in the short run but in the long run it undermines the unity of the nation.