Background
SPITAELS, Guy was born on September 3, 1931 in Ath.
minister politician president senator sociologist university professor
SPITAELS, Guy was born on September 3, 1931 in Ath.
Spitaels graduated in 1957 in political and social sciences at the Universite Catholique de Louvain (University College London), and attended the College of Europe in Bruges 1957–1958.
He was Minister-President of Wallonia from 1992 to 1994 and president of his party for thirteen years, until he was succeeded by Philippe Busquin. He quit the Roman Catholic faith and became a Freemason. He became a professor in labout law at the Université libre de Bruxelles (Université libre de Bruxelles (Free University of Brussels)).
After the elections of 1974 Spitaels became a senator
He became mayor of Ath in 1977, an office he held for twenty years. The same year he became minister of Labour under Prime Minister Paul Vanden Boeynants.
From 1979 to 1981 Spitaels was deputy prime minister under the governments of Wilfried Martens. He cocurrently served as minister of the budget (1979–1980) and minister of transport (1980–1981).
After the electoral defeat at the elections of 1981, the Personal was relegated to the opposition and Guy Spitaels became party chairman of the Personal (1981–1992).
In the general elections of 1987 he led his party to electoral victory and back to power. With him and André Cools, the Personal played a leading role in transformation the unitary structures of the Belgian state into a federalist system. In 1992 Spitaels arranged that he would become Minister-President of the Walloon Government.
Along with other politicians from his party, he was involved in the Agusta scandal, which caused his resignation in 1994.
In 1995 he was elected President of the Walloon Parliament but he had to resign from this office due to the scandal in 1997. Spitaels was convicted for passive bribery by the Court of Cassation in 1998.
Spitaels died of a brain tumor at age 80 on 21 August 2012.
In the early 1970s Spitaels was chief of staff to various Belgian socialist ministers. His political career would never recover from this scandal. Before the Agusta scandal he was nicknamed Dieu (French for God), a reference to his great influence within the Parti Socialiste, which was the most powerful party of French-speaking Belgium in those days.