from a Brussels correspondent
The Social Christian (Catholic) and Social Democratic parties constituting Belgium's coalition government suffered a major defeat in the May 23rd general election. In the Chamber of Deputies, which has 212 seats, the Catholics fell from 96 to 77 seats and the Social Democrats from 84 to 64, For the Social Democrats this was the heaviest defeat in their 72 years of parliamentary activity. The main gainers in the election were the Party for Liberty and Progress (Liberals) which increased its seats from 20 to 48, and the Volksunie (Flemish nationalists) which won 12 seats as compared with 5 in the 1961 election. Both are right wing capitalist parties,
The clear-cut shift to the right registered by the over all election results is ascribable primarily to the policy of capitulation followed by the reformist leaders in their coalition with the Catholic party. Following the general strike of 1960-61, the Social Democratic party recorded the highest vote in its history in the spring 1961 elections, This mandate to push forward along the road of socialism was abused by the Social Democratic leaders, They joined in a capitalist coalition government with the Catholics. This could only disorient and demoralise the working class. The right wing opposition parties capitalised on the situation by advancing a clever demagogic platform that prom= ised everything to everybody. The demagogy proved successful at the polls. As always, the opportunism of the leaders of the working class paved the way for defeat.
In a general swing to the right, in which the Social Democrats lose seats, the parties to the left usuclly suffer too. However, this did not occur on May 23rd due to the fact that among the most conscious sections of the working class there was a shift to the left. As a result, the Communist Party increased its number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies from 5 to 6 and gained two seats in the Senate, The new left socialist party, which has been in existence only a few months, won two seats in the Chamber of Deputies, one in Liege and one in Brussels. A third seat in the south (province of Hainaut) was missed by a few thousand votes, The winner there was Robert Moreau, former assistant national secretary of the Belgian Federation of Labour, who ran on a Walloon nationalist platform.
The vote for the parties of the left ‘was up well over 80% but they failed to win a proportionate number of seats due to division in their ranks. The pro-Peking Communist Party (the Grippa group) refused to join the electoral bloc of the pro-Moscow Communist Party and the new left socialist party. This prevented the bloc from getting a second member of parliament in the Belgian capital. In Antwerp the Communist Party won about 19,000 votes and Camille Huysmans 15,000. But the 34,000 votes gained no seat. Had all the groupings of the left joined in an electoral bloc, they would have won 10 or 11 seats as compared with the 8 that they actually chalked up.
The left socialist member of parliament from Liege is Professor Perin of the Parti des Travailleurs Wallons, the less radical and more nationalist wing of the new party. In Brussels the member is Pierre Le Greve of the Union de la Gauche Socjaliste and chairman of the Brussels Teachers! Union. A well-knowm figure of the far left of the Brussels' labour movement, he was the initiator of the Belgian Committee to Aid the Algerian Revolution. Because of this an attempt was made on his life (by a bomb through the post) by the agents of the Red Hand. His wife became suspicious of the package because an associate of Le Greve had been killed by a similar attempt, and the. plot. failed.