Belgium’s Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo has handed his government’s resignation to the King.<br /><br />It comes after this weekend’s general election which saw his Socialist party defeated.<br /><br />The palace confirmed that King Philip had accepted the resignation and that the government would continue in its job until a new one was sworn in.<br /><br />The Flemish separatist party N-VA won 32 percent of the vote, while the Socialists managed 30 percent.<br /><br />The NVA wants to dissolve Belgium and have it become a confederation of regional governments divided along linguistic lines.<br /><br />The king now begins consultations with political leaders to see who can form a new coalition government.<br /><br />Commentators say there may be a struggle to find a French-speaking party that will work with the N-VA. However a stalemate would be nothing new for the country. In 2010 Belgium broke the world record, taking 541 days to form a new government.
