Jean-Marie Louis Dedecker (born 13 June 1952) is a Belgian politician. In 1999 and 2003, Dedecker was directly elected to the Belgian Senate for the Flemish Liberals and Democrats (VLD). In 2004, Dedecker ran for a seat in the Flemish Parliament, after taking his seat in the Flemish Parliament, Dedecker was elected by his colleagues as a community senator as well. He was expelled from the VLD, and eventually sided with the N-VA party for a brief time in November–December 2006. In January 2007, Dedecker presented his own political party— Lijst Dedecker—that participated in the 2007 general election. Against all expectations, Lijst Dedecker got 5 elected in Parliament, and 1 in Senate. Dedecker became well-known first for his long career as a judo coach, with his judokas winning for Belgium unprecedented number of medals (among them four times Olympian gold), and then for his politics. In 2004, as a pure outsider, he won 38% of the votes for the VLD party leadership against the party establishment. He was expelled from the VLD though in October 2006. Within the VLD he was one of the members that favours breaking the cordon sanitaire around the Vlaams Belang. In 2006, (as VLD member) he published a book, Rechts voor de raap, which became a national best-seller. In 2015, he was awarded the Prize for Liberty by the Flemish classical-liberal think tank Libera!. Since 2019, he has been the mayor of Middelkerke. In the 2019 Belgian federal election, he was elected to parliament once again as an independent candidate on the N-VA's list. VLD exit The 2006 Belgian municipal elections were lost by the VLD, also in Ostend, where Dedecker was a candidate. In Ostend, they lost out to the Socialist Party (SP.A), for which party president Johan Vande Lanotte was a candidate in the city. In the run-up to the elections, Vande Lanotte and Dedecker clashed severely, with Dedecker claiming that Vande Lanotte, as councilor and socialist party "strong man," made Ostend the "Palermo of the North Sea." The local VLD party in Ostend, led by Bart Tommelein, does want to pursue a city coalition with the Socialist though. Dedecker however stated, on election night, that the VLD with this result cannot be part of any coalition. Two days later, the national head of the VLD, Bart Somers, intervened, by stating that Dedecker will be removed from the VLD. Somers stated that in