It is 2028. The ice caps are dwindling, Chelsea Clinton continues her parents’ presidential legacy in the White House…and Belgium still awaits a new federal government after elections in June 2007.

Yes, I’m joking. Belgium faces a very difficult situation right now, and many people hope it will get out of its impasse in the coming weeks. But how?

A quick recap: The linguistically-divided country has been without a new government since an election more than five months ago.

The francophone parties and the Flemish groups expected to make up a centre-right coalition just can’t agree on state reform, prompting concerns that the country could break up along its linguistic fault lines.

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And on it goes…

Belgium waits and waits for a new federal government, almost five months after the election. Next week, it is expected to break its record for the longest-ever talks to form a coalition.

This leaves everyone to muse about the linguistically-divided country’s future, and in particular, the claim that the Flemings of the wealthy (Dutch-speaking) north and the Walloons of the poorer, francophone south, barely know each other.

I suppose when your country has been (briefly) put up for sale on eBay, and the prime minister designate appears unwilling to sing the national anthem, you’re justified in questioning things? But is the doom and gloom making everyone become a bit too tough on themselves?

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One industry doing well out of Belgium’s political crisis is flagmaking. The red, yellow and black tricolour is sprouting from homes across Brussels as people express their support for the continuance of the multilingual state.

The movement has even crept into Dutch-speaking Flanders, where around 40 per cent of people want independence. A tipping point has been reached in my street on the edge of Brussels. On Sunday afternoon one of the 40 houses was flying the flag. By nighttime there were 11.

Mind you, my neighbours have a vested interest. At last count there was only one native Flemish speaker in the street, the rest Francophone or expats like myself. And they don’t want to find themselves suddenly foreigners.

Just reading about the efforts to form a Belgian federal government, which rumble on a mere 22 days after the general election.

Odd? Not really. Apparently it once took 150 days to thrash out a deal for a coalition government in linguistically-divided Belgium, which has zealously carved up the national state and developed a fiendishly complicated political system.

The last time I looked there were, I think, either eight or nine parliaments (in a country the size of Maryland) but who knows - someone might since have slipped in another chamber for good measure.

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