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:
“The liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.”
—Lenny Bruce (1925–1966)
“If a liberal policy towards the late Rebels is adopted, the ultra Republicans are opposed to it; if the colored people are honored, the extremists of the other wing cry out against it. I suspect I am right in both cases.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Do you know I believe that [William Jennings] Bryan will force his nomination on the Democrats again. I believe he will either do this by advocating Prohibition, or else he will run on a Prohibition platform independent of the Democrats. But you will see that the year before the election he will organize a mammoth lecture tour and will make Prohibition the leading note of every address.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)