In what must seem like a case of déjà-vu, Belgium heads to the polls Sunday for a snap general election that again puts its feuding linguistic communities at loggerheads. Ahead of the vote, Flemish separatists campaigning to split up the country are primed to emerge as the dominant political force.

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Like many before them, these elections are vital to Belgium's future, with much hingeing on how the Dutch-speaking majority vote for the independence advocates of the New Flemish Alliance (NVA).

Days ahead of the elections NVA leader Bart de Wever is set to beat outgoing premier Yves Leterme's Christian Democrats to become the biggest party in the wealthy Flemish north, with some 25 per cent of the vote.

The French public seems willing and ready to welcome the Belgian Francophones. According to a survey by French national daily France Soir, 66 per cent of French are in favour of adopting Wallonia as part of France if the country ruptured.

In the midst of its political crisis, and the wider-reaching debt crisis, Belgium will

take the European Union presidency on 1 July. But its political parties are so bitterly at odds that there is little chance of forming a viable coalition in time for the takeover.

It could take months to fashion a new coalition government - especially if, as polls predict, Flemish separatists take the upper hand.

Belgium’s problems all centre on the question of who should have more power within the federation - the Flemish majority or the Francophone minority, who live in the poorer Wallonia region in the south but who are strongest in Brussels.

Federalism has long been a problem in Belgium, which is so attached to regional rule that the country barely flinched when it lived without a government for 196 days in 2008.

For his part, De Wever, claims he is not interested in the national top job – and doesn't see himself as a revolutionary. He believes Belgium, formed in 1830, will "slowly but surely, very gently disappear," as powers are devolved to the regions and the European Union.

So what happened to the most recent government? Leterme's five-partycoalition government imploded in April after a Flemish liberal party walked out, frustrated at the lack of progress in talks aimed at clipping special rights accorded to Francophone residents in Flanders.

While the proportional representation system makes a coalition government inevitable, no one knows how long it will take to put an administration together. After the last elections it took Leterme nine months.

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