Vincent Van Quickenborne

A delegation of the Belgian government, headed by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, is currently visiting Washington. Vincent van Quickenborne, the Belgian secretary of state for administrative simplification (!), is part of the delegation. Last Wednesday, secretary van Quickenborne paid a visit to the headquarters of 311, the US government office for non-emergency information.

Journalists were not allowed to accompany the Belgian secretary, but because politicians need media coverage, Mr van Quickenborne (known in Belgium as “minister Q”) told the Americans that the journalists belonged to his staff. One of the papers present was De Standaard. It reported yesterday that one of the journalists had forgotten to bring along his passport. “Q” helped him out by giving him a false identity card to the name of Homer Dupont, born 1950. Apparently, members of the Belgian government visiting the US are carrying false documents just in case they need to fool their American hosts. “The card was fake, but it worked,” the paper writes. “We only wonder whether the name Homer Dupont refers to the character from the Simpsons, or to the Belgian Minister of Civil Servants, Christian Dupont (born 1947).”