Fabien Roussel (PCF) this Saturday in Toulouse: “My pact is the France of happy days”
National secretary of the PCF and candidate for the presidential election, Fabien Roussel is participating this Saturday in the Fête de l’Humanité in Toulouse. Maintenance.
National secretary of the PCF and candidate for the presidential election, Fabien Roussel is participating this Saturday in the Fête de l’Humanité in Toulouse. Maintenance.
What is the meaning of a Communist candidacy for the presidential election of 2022?
The French expect big changes on the occasion of this election. The health crisis has revealed their expectations in terms of health, but they are also very strong in terms of purchasing power, wages, pensions or social protection. They require major reforms, we must tackle the root causes. This is the meaning of the pact that I am proposing to the French.
What are the proposals of this pact?
Our country is very rich but its wealth is poorly redistributed. They escape those who produce them and in addition, they are poorly produced. They wear out both men and the planet. I propose to quickly increase wages and pensions and reduce working hours. Several thousand employees in difficult conditions and poorly paid: housekeepers, garbage collectors, home workers, farmers. On the reduction of working time, experiments have been launched in Spain, with 32 hours per week or the four-day week. If I am elected, I would like to open negotiations on the subject with employees and employers, branch by branch. We can work less but all work. My pact is the France of happy days.
what will your priorities be if you are elected?
The youth. An unprecedented effort must be made for National Education. This will be the priority of the five-year term. I want to limit the number of students per class, recruit 90,000 teaching posts and extend teaching time at school: 27 hours in the first level, 32 hours in the secondary. So all the homework will be done at school so that the young people can prepare for something else chosen when they get home.
You speak out for security, for nuclear power and against single-sex meetings. Why do you pick up on these subjects, more attracted to the right?
The French demand both social protection and protection at home. This demand for public tranquility exists, it must be answered. I do not do like other candidates who will accept factious police officers. I am in favor of a community police force, 30,000 strong, and it is up to the State to assume this role, not to the private sector or to the municipalities. Tranquility is also a lack of bus stop, educators, sports equipment … You have to be able to answer them. As for nuclear, we need to reduce the electricity bill. To deprive oneself of it is to increase prices. Finally, concerning single-sex meetings and the issue of equal rights, I consider that there is only one race and that is race.
Why do you advocate making those convicted of racism ineligible?
The presidential debate becomes the pestilential debate. If we let it happen, it will fall lower than the ground. The word seems uninhibited, we hear scandalous discriminatory remarks on race, religion or sex. And some people who want to run for office have already been convicted of inciting racial hatred. These same people who make revisionist remarks by wanting to rehabilitate Papon or Pétain. But Nazism is not an opinion, it is a crime punishable by law. I want to strengthen the Gayssot law to make ineligible people convicted of “racism” or “incitement to hatred”.
Your great-grandfather died in the Vernet concentration camp in Ariège. How did that build you?
His name was Salvador and was fleeing Franco’s Spain. He had found refuge with his family in Tarbes in a family of doctors. But he was arrested by the French police for a fight in a bar and found himself locked up for three years at the Vernet camp with the Communists, foreigners and Spanish Republicans. My grandmother, who was staying in a nuns’ convent, told me how she saw her father behind barbed wire, prisoner in inhuman conditions. And it was France that did that, the France of Vichy.
The program of the Fête de l’Humanité
The Fête de l’Humanité takes place on Saturday and Sunday in Ramonville, near Toulouse. Abdullah Naibi, leader of the New Afghan People’s Party, will be present.
Georges Meric and Carole
Delga are also invited as well as representatives of the Embassy of Cuba. Afghan and Kurdish artists and politicians receive a solidarity check from the Communist members of Haute Garonne. This Saturday Fabien Roussel speaks at 4 p.m. on the themes of health and research. This Sunday, October 17, the Fête de l’Humanité 31 moves to the Bikini, where many concerts will take place: the Grandes Bouches, Irina Gonzales and Rachid Benallaoua (Controlled Origin). Free admission.