This article appears in the June 10, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
FRENCH LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS
Solidarité & Progrès and La Raison
du Peuple on the Campaign Trail!
[Print version of this article]
June 5—Solidarité & Progrès (S&P), the party founded by Jacques Cheminade, the long-time leader of the LaRouche movement in France, and three-time Presidential candidate, is making a crucial strategic intervention into the future policy of France, with the intention to have France once again play a leading role in defense of the economic and political sovereignty of all nations, and of the sovereign rights of the people of those nations. It was in France that the first modern nation state was established, inspired by the principles established at the great ecumenical Council of Florence of 1439.
S&P is fielding 13 candidates in the June 12–19 elections for the French National Assembly (France’s lower house) as part of a broader coalition running a total of 72 candidates, dubbed the “The Reason of the People,” which was created in alliance with Georges Kuzmanovic’s République Souveraine party and other candidates. The LaRouche-allied candidates include Sébastien Périmony and Odile Mojon-Cheminade, who have entered the challenge to represent French overseas citizens residing in two different overseas constituencies, the first in the Maghreb region and parts of Central Africa and the second constituency in the rest of Africa and the SW Asian nations; Hamada Salim, who is running in the overseas department of Mayotte, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and the coast of Mozambique; and 10 candidates in Metropolitan France (Mainland France and Corsica), in departments other than Paris, dominated these days by green and globalist ideology. French National Assembly deputies serve a five-year term. Benoît Odille, Pierre Baronet, and Arnold Voilemin are running in the greater Paris region, Gerard Julien in the Drome, and Julie Péréa, a City Councilor of Poussan, in southeastern France.
This legislative campaign comes at a moment of great potential, to provoke a key change in the political complexion of France, to overthrow the turbid party system that has been shutting down real ideas, real hope and real progress. Living standards have been sharply hit first by the pandemic and the shutdowns, and now by the huge energy price increases provoked by the sanctions imposed against Russia in response to the war against Ukraine. This comes on top of the drop in living standards caused by the deindustrialization of the country with the cheap-labor globalization policy and the flight into the service economy. The Yellow Vest movement that rocked France starting in 2018 as a direct result of that process was slowed down somewhat by those crises, but its embers are still burning and ready to start.
The French population in the 2022 presidential elections (first round), turned out a combined large vote for the two main opposition candidates, Marine Le Pen, from the right-wing National Front and Jean Luc Melenchon from the left wing “France Insoumise,” who both ran campaigns against the drop in living standards, but also in favor of France reestablishing its legendary independence from the different blocs. The two main opposition parties, described above, got a combined vote of 45%. They both called for France to withdraw from the NATO integrated command, and were joined by several of the smaller parties in that. As a matter of fact, 60% of the vote went to the parties that opposed NATO!
So far, the leaders of those parties have refused to join forces against the NATO wars, and have not taken the steps to establish the policies that would really reestablish the greatness of France, in the sense Charles de Gaulle saw it.
The purpose of the “Reason of the People” alliance, is to provide a voice to that opposition which could really lead to those objectives. Many of the S&P candidates and others in this alliance, have emerged from the popular ranks of the Yellow Vest movement. The Reason of the People’s Candidate’s Charter calls for reestablishing a national bank; for public credit to finance productive jobs by developing the scientific, industrial, and infrastructural sectors; for strict Glass-Steagall principles of banking separation. And it calls for withdrawing from NATO’s integrated command to be free to choose its own allies and foreign policies. The charter defines its policy orientation as being in the footsteps of those of Charles de Gaulle and Jean Jaures.
The S&P legislative campaign was kicked off on April 27, with a campaign caravan that stopped first in Vendée (in the Pays de la Loire region south of Brittany), to support our candidates in this area. Unemployment in Vendée is one of the lowest in France, but the working poor live on the edge with very low paying service industry jobs. The brutal rise of prices is felt and feared acutely. The S&P candidates, backed up by 15 campaign volunteers from the national caravan, were very well received when they campaigned at factory gates and in front of hospitals and public markets. They are well known in the region for their long-standing political and trade union commitments and launched their highly public candidacies even before the other political parties got their own campaigns off the ground.
Jacques Cheminade joined the candidates in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre, where candidate Virginie Fouquet recruited people to join her on the spot, one person saying that she and all her family will vote for her, exclaiming: “You are my candidate!” Candidate Daniel Guédon led a rally in front of the Fleury Michon food factory in the city of Pouzauges, where he worked for several years and is known by the employees as well as the management. Candidate Benoît Jamonneau campaigned with the team in front of the Departmental Hospital Center (CHD) in La Roche-sur-Yon. The employees of the hospital, currently on strike, were even more angry against the dismantling of the health system and the deterioration of their working conditions and very happy to see a candidate, well-known in the region, standing up for them and fighting for a policy to reverse this destruction.
At a public meeting, two of the Vendée candidates were joined by Jacques Cheminade, and the two local stations, TV Vendée and TV 3 Provinces, were in attendance. The meeting ended in a magnificent spirit of optimism and determination to mobilize the youngest in this fight, with a call to action and an invitation to participate in the next day’s deployment to the main square of La Roche-sur-Yon.
Several young students, Yellow Vest activists and trade unionists, all very angry and worried about the rising prices in gas stations and supermarkets, were eager to talk with the candidates.
The campaign caravan went south to Bordeaux to support Jonathan Florit, a very active and well-known 19-year-old, who was very happy to campaign with former Presidential candidate Jacques Cheminade. They both were interviewed by Radio Merignac, and Cheminade insisted on the importance of a “youth” candidacy such as that of Jonathan, because of the impact that his commitment can exert among the older but also the younger generations. The 19-year-old has been very active in the community since he was very young, being the regional delegate of the National Association of Apprentices of France and in 2018, he was a youth advisor to the local government, as well as being involved as a volunteer in several local associations. He is the president of a cultural association for young people, and co-candidate Patricia Labansat, is the vice president.
Running in the 9th and 10th districts of the French abroad, Périmony and Mojon-Cheminade are using the occasion to call for win-win policies of infrastructural co-development, in order to improve an image of France which is at an all-time low in those countries. “I’m for the Treaty of Westphalia, Macron is for the Congress of Berlin, declared Périmony in interviews, to indicate his clear anti-colonial stand; Odile Mojon-Cheminade denounced the fact that French policies in the Middle East have entirely followed the U.S. orientations since De Gaulle’s demise.
