The alliance between the former “brothers” turned rivals (due to personal ambition over electoral issues) seems decidedly sealed. There will no longer be a “neither-nor”, but will we soon see a “no to the left” and a “yes to the right”? The traditional and systematic behavior of UDI elected officials would suggest so. In the Azure stronghold of the UMP, this allegiance has always been widely rewarded.
So why change? For loyalty to values?
Of course, there is politics with a capital “P”, as Fabien Bénard, the president of Modem 06, reminds us. But there is also the politics of double “p” (in lowercase), that of “personal profit”.
The centrist family will gather. This past weekend, the University of Return of the Democratic Movement in Brittany helped dispel the fears and criticisms we had expressed with a decision and information that suddenly came from the top.
Yes, the “base” has things to say and our Democratic Movement has demonstrated its attachment to the principle of subsidiarity. Now we must move forward on the modalities of a gathering of the centrist family.
However, since political play is often a game of carefully crafted phrases sought and encouraged by various media, and since we cannot do without their megaphone, I will immediately clarify three things:
An alliance with the UDI, national and local, whether for the European or before for the municipal elections, will be based on ideas, values, and projects. The question of positions on the lists is not our priority. We have elected officials, we will have elected officials.
The Democratic Movement of Alpes-Maritimes laid out conditions and restrictions for this rapprochement to the national MoDem for the National Council held Friday night in Guidel.
In discussions with our centrist partners, we find friends, active elected officials, sincere activists, and also some people with whom we have had words or differences.
We will share our pot of salt as a family, but not swallow bitter pills. Our commitment is indeed conditioned by the projects for our cities, villages, the quality of local actors, and everyone understands well that there are situations with hot points.
Likewise, if we work with outgoing elected officials or partners for new “majorities of requirement”, it remains evident that our independence is founded on the simple observation that there are good ideas in the center, on the right, on the left, among environmental defenders. We will not discuss or work with people who have no compatibility with our ethics and values.
My third clarification is that now opens the time for the formation of citizens so that they dare to be candidates in their city, I am thinking of the youth and women, who with the new requirement of parity in towns with more than 1,000 inhabitants will be able to sit in numbers in dozens of municipalities.
Incidentally, it is the renewal of people and practices that we are working on. The training of candidates, acquiring methods to define project sheets for neighborhoods, urban planning, supporting commerce, understanding public accounts, combining social linkage and security desire, and searching for people with diverse profiles and skills are all essential areas that will further distance us from the pettiness and sterile polemics.
The challenge is as clear as it is important. The united centrist family will defend Europe which guarantees economic solidarity, peace, and intellectual, moral, and social progress. The united centrist family represents an alternative to security barks, to those who make foreigners scapegoats for the ailments of the French or the Azuréens.
Finally, part of our country’s difficulties lies in the endless reproduction of patterns that the French people no longer want: the accumulation of mandates in number and duration, caricatural bipolarization of ideas (linked to most voting systems), violence in postures and outrageous statements. Political professionals do not question themselves sufficiently and do not listen well to the French people.
The hegemony of the PS and the UMP, with occasional alternations to pretend democracy exists, is responsible for this state of affairs.
Because the inhabitants of Alpes-Maritimes must have other choices for the upcoming elections, because the lack of hope must transform into citizenship and actions, not into a sanction vote for the President or a blue-marine outlet, we will work tirelessly for humanism and solidarity to reshape the future of our children.
It’s time to conclude this position statement: I remain convinced that social democrats, whether members of the PS or not, radicals, committed ecologists, elected officials and UMP activists are perfectly sincere and cannot be pleased with shortcuts, amalgams, the stirring of fears, or flaring jibes. I will work with them.
If I stated to Nice-Matin that there were UMP members who are acceptable and others who are less so, it’s evident, and I will not name names. They will be visible enough in the upcoming months of open political campaigns.
You know them, or you will judge them by their positions between the two rounds, their way of courting the people by appealing to their basest instincts. So it doesn’t matter if the UDI and its components are sometimes systematically allies of the UMP.
I count on their national and local bodies not to raise the stakes too high and not to demand from us, the Democratic Movement, an independence that they do not seek for themselves!
If the center marks a clear boundary, to its right and its left, asserting that not everything is equivalent and not everything can be said, Politics will finally and certainly regain some letters of nobility and panache. It will mainly regain its usefulness and some credibility for the people.
Fabien Bénard
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