Political row breaks out in Belgium over housing of Chinese pandas

Rival Dutch-and French-speaking communities in Belgium are at each others’ throats again - this time over the loan of two giant pandas by China to the linguistically divided nation.

“The pandas of discord,” screamed the daily Le Soir on Wednesday.

“Pandas, a question of national interest,” said La Libre Belgique as the country worried over the long-negotiated and now contentious deal.

The problem is that the rare bears, a reliable draw for visitors, are to be housed in a zoo in French-speaking southern Wallonia, not far from the city of Mons whose last mayor is none other than Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, who is from that region.

And Belgium’s oldest and most well-known zoo, located in the heart of the port city of Antwerp in northern Flanders, is indignant to have lost out to the Pairi Daiza animal park set up a couple of decades ago.

“We should have been able to count on the support of the prime minister,” said Ilse Segers, spokeswoman for the Antwerp Zoo set up in 1843.