[suddenclarity]

> if the main complaint that you have about your politicians is that they sometimes look at their phones

It's just a cheap shot to rile up people that don't know better. Actively listening and arguing with opposition in the Parliament have very little to do with actual politics.

Swedish newspapers do a similar thing every year when they name and shame the politicians that submitted the fewest bills, making no mention of the fact that they are all useless and will be rejected in the current system. Somewhat related, The Social Democrats abuse the system and use AI to generate hundreds of questions each month that the government have to research and give written responses to. It's all a ton of pointless work that have negative impact on actually getting things done.

I'm confident most people can agree that Belgium have worse problems. Without knowing the details, I believe them going two years without a government had more impact than politicians using their phones while waiting for their time to speak or vote.

[cinntaile]

The fact that Belgium could function without too much issues for that long points to that it did not have much of an impact. This is because a lot of the things that a normal federal government does, is done by the regions in Belgium.