Was it an air guitar solo or a charade of public urination?
So ran the debate in the Belgian parliament last Thursday over the alleged bad party behaviour of Belgium’s Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne and his friends, the BBC reports.
Part of the ongoing political fallout saga known in Belgian media as ‘Pipigate,’ Quickenborne, of the Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats party, had to answer to his country’s parliament over the events at his 50th birthday party on August 14th.
Police surveillance footage showed guests leaving the politician’s home late in the evening and then urinating on the empty police van parked outside.
Belgian media has cited other footage that they allege shows Quickenborne coming out of his home with another friend and imitating urinating while looking at images of the previous urinating incident on his phone—as if he were joining in the other guests’ antics.
Belgian media reports led to predictable public outrage.
The Belgian police union NSPV released a scathing statement saying Quickenborne was “unworthy of [being] a minister of justice” and opposition leaders have also said he is unfit for office.
Quickenborne has denied both knowing about his guests relieving themselves on the police van and media accounts of the additional footage. He released his own private home security camera footage, which he says verifies his account of his actions that evening.
He said he was escorting another friend out hours after the other three guests had urinated on the police and van, had his phone out to take a selfie with the friend, and was performing an “air guitar solo.”
“I hate to admit it,” he is quoted by the Flemish newspaper Het Nieuwsblad as explaining to the Justice Committee of the Belgian parliament on Thursday. “I specialise in that. I am a metalhead.”
He also told the committee:
I am ashamed that people I invited [to] my house peed against a police van … it is disgusting, especially considering why the van is there.
Quickenborne and his family have been assigned a police security detail since a failed kidnapping of them took place last year. The van is thought to be part of the police presence assigned to the politician.
The identities of the three men accused of peeing on the police van are still unknown and the prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation. Quickenborne said in parliament that he had cooperated with the investigation by asking those involved to come forward.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo was also at the party and has said he did not see anything.
