No Berlusconi, But Belgian Prime Minister Gets Passionate Public Kiss

LE SOIR (Belgium)

MONS – Rock stars aren't the only ones with groupies – bow-tied prime ministers have some too. During local celebrations last Friday, Belgium Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo was targeted by just such a super-fan. While the professorial PM was posing with Socialist Party supporters, a young woman pounced on him and kissed him ... passionately ... on the lips!

Photographer Philippe Bourguet, who snapped the picture that went viral in Belgium (see below), saw it this way: She kissed him and "embraced him for a while – for almost five minutes. She couldn't stop repeating ‘Elio, I'm in love with you"," Belgium newspaper Le Soir reports.

But Karin Wauters, the woman in question, has another version. She said she has known Di Rupo since she was a little girl. "This was a friendly kiss and that's all. I have a lot of respect for Elio," she declared.

All's fair, it seems, in love and politics....

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Migrant Lives

Migration

What's Driving More Venezuelans To Migrate To The U.S.

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Photo of a family of Migrants from Venezuela crossing the Rio Grande between Mexico and the U.S. to surrender to the border patrol with the intention of requesting humanitarian asylum

Migrants from Venezuela crossed the Rio Grande between Mexico and the U.S. to surrender to the border patrol with the intention of requesting humanitarian asylum.

David Peinado via Zuma Press

Julio Borges

-Analysis-

Migration has too many elements to count. Beyond the matter of leaving your homeland, the process creates a gaping emptiness inside the migrant — and outside, in their lives. If forced upon someone, it can cause psychological and anthropological harm, as it involves the destruction of roots. That's in fact the case of millions of Venezuelans who have left their country without plans for the future or pleasurable intentions.

Their experience is comparable to paddling desperately in shark-infested waters. As many Mexicans will concur, it is one thing to take a plane, and another to pay a coyote to smuggle you to some place 'safe.'

Venezuela's mass emigration of recent years has evolved in time. Initially, it was the middle and upper classes and especially their youth, migrating to escape the socialist regime's socio-political and economic policies. Evidently, they sought countries with better work, study and business opportunities like the United States, Panama or Spain. The process intensified after 2017 when the regime's erosion of democratic structures and unrelenting economic vandalism were harming all Venezuelans.