1. Jean-Marie Louis Dedecker was born on 13 June 1952 and is a Belgian politician.
21 Facts About Jean-Marie Dedecker
1. 2.
In 1999 and 2003, Dedecker was directly elected to the Belgian Senate for the Flemish Liberals and Democrats.
3.
Against all expectations, Lijst Jean-Marie Dedecker got 5 elected in Parliament, and 1 in Senate.
4.
Jean-Marie Dedecker became well-known first for his long career as a judo coach, with his judokas winning for Belgium unprecedented number of medals, and then for his politics.
5.
Jean-Marie Dedecker was expelled from the VLD though in October 2006.
6.
The 2006 Belgian municipal elections were lost by the VLD, in Ostend, where Jean-Marie Dedecker was a candidate.
7.
Jean-Marie Dedecker however stated, on election night, that the VLD with this result cannot be part of any coalition.
8.
Two days later, the national head of the VLD, Bart Somers, intervened, by stating that Jean-Marie Dedecker will be removed from the VLD.
9.
Jean-Marie Dedecker openly invited Dedecker to start a VLOTT division in West Flanders.
10.
Jean-Marie Dedecker goes out the same way: the party leader of the SP.
11.
Jean-Marie Dedecker made it clear that he would not join the Vlaams Belang, the largest right wing party of Flanders.
12.
The Christian Democratic and Flemish party, with whom the N-VA had an electoral cartel agreement, stated they didn't want to be in league with Jean-Marie Dedecker and broke off the association.
13.
In September 2006, Jean-Marie Dedecker told the press that he had the names of three Belgian cyclists, who went to Italy for illegal doping treatments.
14.
The information Jean-Marie Dedecker gave in September 2006 led to house searches throughout Belgium in June 2007 of persons related to cycling.
15.
On 3 January 2007, Jean-Marie Dedecker announced that he would set up a new political party.
16.
On 4 January 2007, Jean-Marie Dedecker explained his plans by stating that he wanted to be the Flemish party political equivalent of Geert Wilders and Pim Fortuyn.
17.
Jean-Marie Dedecker called his project a healthy right-wing political formation.
18.
Jean-Marie Dedecker officially presented his new party on 19 January 2007.
19.
On 14 October 2018, Jean-Marie Dedecker was elected as mayor of Middelkerke.
20.
Jean-Marie Dedecker was elected with 40,781 preferential votes and sat as an independent in the Chamber of Representatives.
21.
In October 2020, Jean-Marie Dedecker stated in an interview that he will resign from parliament as he wanted to give priority to his mayorship.