The president of the MR, Georges-Louis Bouchez, rejected, on Friday, the criticisms expressed in the political world and the French-speaking media following his debate, with the president of Vlaams Belang, Tom Van Grieken. This debate was intended to be a kind of replica of the Macron-Le Pen debate broadcast on French channels on Wednesday before the second round of the presidential election. The choice of the president of the French-speaking liberals was immediately criticized because it is similar to a rupture of the media cordon sanitaire with regard to the extreme right to which the French-speaking parties have subscribed.
On RTBF, Secretary of State Thomas Dermine (PS) took note of the “political fact” that this debate constitutes. If the far right has never known the Flemish or French scores in French-speaking Belgium, it is thanks to the media cordon sanitaire, he pointed out. “There are very serious studies which show that excluding far-right parties from debates causes them to remain low at the ballot box. Georges-Louis Bouchez knows this and, today, he is making a conscious choice to break the cordon sanitaire which is a well-established tradition on the French-speaking side”, he declared Thursday evening.
“We don’t debate the far right, we fight it,” tweeted Ecolo co-president Rajae Maouane.
On social networks, Mr. Bouchez also wanted to justify his choice. “We fight (the far-right parties) by debating and dismantling their arguments, not in a deadly environment?”, he replied to Ms. Maouane. And to add, retaining only the political aspect of the sanitary cordon, to the address of an Internet user who challenged him: “How did I break the sanitary cordon? The sanitary cordon is not to conclude agreements with the extreme right and the extreme left. For the debates, in Flanders, the Belang has been on the sets for a long time. So what have I broken?
“I was in the Flemish region where the sanitary cordon does not exist”
Invited in the morning of LN24 this Friday, Georges-Louis Bouchez returned to this debate and responded to his detractors. First, the exchange did not take place live, insisted the liberal. “It was recorded more than an hour before, which falls within the rules of RTBF,” he argues. “It took place on the Flemish public channel, I was not invited to a congress of Vlaams Belang”.
“The same commentators have done us tons with the Le Pen-Macron debate. So French speakers can see Marine Le Pen broadcast her program, that’s no problem for anyone”, then defends Georges-Louis Bouchez, although Belgians cannot vote for Le Pen when it comes to French politics.
To which Bouchez retorts: “Walloons cannot vote for Vlaams Belang. I have been in the Flemish region where the cordon sanitaire does not exist. I am regularly present in the Flemish media, so it was logical that I confronted with Belang at a time”, he supports, recalling that the PTB had already also debated with the far-right party.
“I am not campaigning to question the sanitary cordon on the French-speaking side. I respect the rules in the area where I am”, justifies the president of the MR. “If we want a sanitary cordon with regard to the far right, I don’t see why we wouldn’t do it for the far left,” he said.
In 2019, the PTB, a unitary party, also sparked controversy when its president, Peter Mertens, debated with Mr. Van Grieken. At the time, Mr. Bouchez had regretted the common points that the two presidents found in the fight “ once morest the establishment”. “Extremes attract but the cordon sanitaire is non-negotiable for the MR,” he tweeted at the time.