‘Election programmes, who reads them anymore?’

I went through the election manifestos of the seven largest Flemish parties, amounting to more than 1700 pages of reading material, and then ended up in bed with a headache.

On June 9, we will all go to the polls and the I-don’t-know-who-I’m-voting group seems bigger than ever.

In the last federal elections in 2019, the number of non-voters was approximately 17 percent of the population, more than 1.3 million Belgians entitled to vote. The activists who stood on the barricades less than a hundred years ago for universal suffrage, regardless of origin or gender, would turn in their graves upon hearing that high number.

There are many reasons for this disinterest, but election manifestos that are hundreds of pages long do not make it easy for citizens to obtain information.

At the family table and in the pub, ignorance seems to prevail. Which party does not lie or deceive me? Who wants more purchasing power? Who for cheaper public transport or for greater weapons production? You could call it a lack of civic sense, that failure to inform oneself. But it is up to politicians to make it clear what they stand for. Why should you vote for them, and not for their colleagues to their left or right?

Of course, the media plays a role in this also an important role. Journalists try to put the spotlight on politicians and bring a clear view to the positions of parties. Yet, in principle, voters should also be able to contact politicians directly.

Short version

All parties have now published an extensive election manifesto, in which they list what they want to achieve in the next administrative period. If you have plenty of time, go for it. To everyone else: don’t start. Would you like to quickly review Vooruit’s party programme? A mere 288 pages. That of the PVDA then? 628 pages. And that of the CD&V? 442 pages. Suppose that after all your busy activities during the day you still find time to… If you read 10 pages in the program every evening, you will be complete 44 days later. And then you only know what the CD&V has to offer you.

It is of course good that the Flemish parties come out with a substantively substantiated programme. But if they want the voter to actually read and understand that – and you could assume that – they would be better off looking at how our neighbors approach this. In Germany, for example, many parties publish one in addition to their full election manifesto Leichter Sprache, in other words: a short version in plain language. The PS also provides a 1, 5 or 15-minute version of its 1221-page program across the language border in our country.

Voters who want to be informed would end up in bed after seven documents, not with a headache, but with a little less I-don’t-know-who-I-will-vote feeling. Only gains for democracy, right?

Adriaan Cartuyvels studies conflict & development at Ghent University and contributed to Knack’s Voting Test check.