Variety is the spice of life as Belgian politicians contrive to present united front

By Ann Cahill, Europe Correspondent

Last month, 7.3 million voters went to the polls to elect their Chamber of Representatives and the Senate.

This federal parliament keeps the country that is not much bigger than Munster from breaking into at least two parts.

The prime minister Guy Verhofstadt will retain his job and his Liberal party will be joined in power once again by the Socialists.

Between them they won two thirds of the seats and the Liberals have one seat more in the lower house than the Socialists.

Their third coalition partners, the Greens, were beaten almost out of existence, losing all nine seats in the northern Flemish part of the country and seven of their eleven seats in the southern French part.

Their seats were picked up by the Socialists and the far right, especially the anti-foreigner Vlaams Blok party.

While there is an agreement among the political parties not to go into power with Vlaams Blok their growing public support is worrying many politicians.

The election result was straight forward enough but there is nothing simple or straight forward about the way Belgium governs itself.

They have made huge efforts to keep the country together despite the enmity between the French-speaking southern half and the Dutch-speaking north.

There are hundreds of local and regional elected councils and governments in an effort to make sure one side does not dominate the other.

It assumes ridiculous proportions in some cases, such as a Brussels Agriculture Minister with just a few dozen hectares of land in his portfolio.

But at least despite some nasty street fighting a few years ago, the politicians have managed to hold the country together.

The enmity is mostly confined to French speakers refusing to understand or giving wrong information to Flemish speakers, and vice versa.

The main governments are the federal and four regional ones for the French-speaking southern Wallonia (42% of the population), the northern Dutch-speaking Flanders (57%), the German-speaking area in the east (1%), and the bilingual capital, Brussels where 10% of the population live.

The biggest task facing the prime minister - once known as Baby Thatcher for his right-wing economic politics is to revive the sluggish economy with its 12% unemployment rate, the growing antipathy to immigrants and the huge government debt.