Dick of the year
Explaining De Wever’s political success to a non-Belgian (or even a French-speaking Belgian) is challenging. He is cynical, arrogant, and easily outsmarts everyone around the table. He’s also bad at making polite small-talk and has mild germophobia, making campaigns extra challenging.
How, then, has he proven so durable? He has been party president since 2004, remarkable in an age when most politicians rise and fall faster than the stock market.
“You could see that he was a man who picks up things very quickly, who reacts very fast,” said Geert Bourgeois, who founded the party and handed the reins to De Wever two decades ago. “Bart is a chess player. I could tell he had a lot of capacities. He doesn’t just have the strategic vision, but he’s also a good debater.”
In those two decades, De Wever managed to transform the N-VA from a fringe party with just one elected member in parliament to the biggest political force in the country. Throughout that period, he became and remained one of the country’s most popular politicians.
In the early days of his career, a wildly popular TV quiz show catalyzed his bigger public breakthrough. Belgium got to know the intellectual who was obsessed with ancient history, but at the same time indulged in Burgundian cuisine (De Wever weighed 142 kilograms at the time) and was razor sharp and quick-witted.
He had a legendary response to being awarded maximum points after naming various animal species on the quiz show: “You can’t have shit thrown at your head all day without learning something from it.”
