Belgium's far-right Vlaams Blok party was on the brink of a historic breakthrough last night after initial results in the federal elections indicated it had increased its support by almost a third and achieved its best result in its 25-year history.
Preliminary results showed the party had bettered its 1999 score of 15.4 per cent in Flanders, where two-thirds of Belgians live, by a margin of between four and five percentage points, a result which could see it smash through the psychologically important 20 per cent barrier.
"If these initial results are right the Blok looks to be one of the big winners in Flanders and to have increased its vote by 3 or 4 or even 5 per cent," said a commentator on the country's RTBF TV station.
The fiercely anti-immigration party will not, however, form part of the next government. The country's mainstream parties have consistently made alliances in order to deny it real power since it was founded in 1977 and are expected to do so again.
For now, Belgium, which has a population of 10 million, looks likely to get a left-right coalition.
Early results suggested that the Liberals and the Socialists, who have governed with the Greens for the past four years, have again done well in both Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia.
"The two major coalition partners are progressing. We are moving toward a government with a Liberal-Socialist axis," said Mr Karel De Gucht, leader of the Flemish Liberal party. The two "must become the backbone of the next government", he added.
Their junior coalition partner, the Greens, appears however to have been all but annihilated.
Equally, the conservative Christian Democrats, who have governed Belgium almost without interruption since the 1950s, looked to have failed to win back the initiative and seemed set to remain in opposition.
Another four years of a left-right coalition, albeit without the Greens, is likely to see Belgium continue in a resolutely liberal direction. Since it came to power in 1999 the coalition has legalised euthanasia, decriminalised cannabis and legalised gay weddings.
Whether Mr Guy Verhofstadt, the incumbent Flemish Liberal Prime Minister, will manage to keep the premiership remained unclear last night. If the Socialists became the country's largest party they would fill the post with one of their own candidates.
However, it is the rise of the far right which has caused the greatest concern in mainstream political circles. With its slogan "Our own people first", the Vlaams Blok rages against the "massive presence" of non-European foreigners in Belgium and is demanding that the country close its borders to immigrants altogether.
It wants "criminal" and illegal immigrants to be deported and for legal immigrants to be enticed to return home - usually to Turkey and north Africa - with cash payments.
It is also separatist. It wants Dutch-speaking Flanders, the northern and more prosperous part of Belgium, to become independent from French-speaking Wallonia, the southern and poorer segment, and advocates the dissolution of Belgium as a nation state.
Its political tracts are unsubtle. One, entitled Realities, includes a cartoon strip called "the adventures of an honourable taxpayer".
The main character, a white Belgian dressed in tweeds, has his car vandalised by immigrants, is fired because of immigrant job quotas, is beaten up by masked foreigners and is then let down by a powerless police force.- Guardian service