NEWLY crowned Miss Belgium speaks several languages, including French, English and Czech.
But that doesn't count for much when she can't manage Dutch – a deficiency viewed as a slight by Flemish speakers in the increasingly divided country.
Alizée Poulicek, 20, was booed by some of the 3,400 fans in Antwerp, the heart of Dutch-speaking Flanders, after she failed to answer a question in elementary Dutch and switched to French during Saturday night's contest.
In a country that has been without a government for almost 200 days due to continued strife between Dutch-speaking and French-speaking parties, the linguistic abilities of a beauty queen take on a bigger significance.
"Miss Belgium does not speak Dutch" said a headline in the Dutch-language Het Laatste Nieuws. "Miss Belgium is not 'tweetalig'", wrote the Francophone La Libre, using the Dutch word for bilingual, to highlight ever-increasing Flemish demands that all Belgians in the public eye should also speak the majority language.
The Dutch-speaking Flemings make up six million of the 10.5 million Belgians; most of the rest are Francophones, although there is a small German- speaking community in the east of the country.
Northern Flanders and southern Wallonia have since gained greater autonomy within the Belgian structures, but many in Flanders still pounce on every perceived linguistic slight.
Ms Poulicek now knows that. The daughter of a Czech father and a Belgian mother, she lives in the French-speaking city of Huy. She spent half her life in the Czech Republic and returned to Belgium only six years ago.
Living in the south, she has had little need to speak Dutch. Now that will have to change.
"I have to try, learn more," she told VRT network in halting Dutch. She continued in French. "I spoke almost no Dutch when I started this adventure."
For Darlene Devos, the organiser of the Miss Belgium contest, it could have been a lot worse. "
I don't worry about this too much. It is the least painful thing. I would consider it different if they had said: 'Miss Belgium is an ugly girl'," she said.
Earlier this week, Guy Verhofstadt, the caretaker premier, accepted a call from the country's ruler, King Albert, to form an interim government to address urgent economic issues after 10 June polls led to the nation's longest political stalemate.
Mr Verhofstadt has had talks with the Liberals and Christian Democrats on the Dutch- speaking side and Socialists and Liberals in the southern Francophone region, after six months of attempts to form a government between Liberals and Christian Democrats failed.
The Dutch-speaking Flemish parties had been seeking a major overhaul of the nation's institutions to obtain more autonomy for their prosperous region, a move rejected by the Francophone parties from southern Wallonia.
, we're just in the final decisive week of the negotiations and it looks like it still is going to be a failure...
