On the sidelines of an interview by Free on the eve of May 1, 2022, Elio Di Rupo (PS) spoke to a rheto student who came to attend the interview. “What do you want to do as a study?” he asks her. And the young girl replied that she was considering going to political science. “It is a mistake for universities to call politics a science, politics is an art”. He will return to this artistic metaphor, a few moments later, to answer a question regarding his political future, at the end of his mandate as Minister-President of Wallonia, which will end following the election (and the negotiations which will follow) of May or June 2024: “Do you tell a painter that he has to stop at 65? We will see, but I feel in excellent health.”
Elio Di Rupo (71) is unfathomable regarding his future intentions. Even if he has an idea as to the role he intends to play for his party in the future, he will be careful not to announce it as he knows that too early declarations can harm an ambition. Above all, he also knows that, this time, he is no longer the only one to decide. By rallying the Walloon capital following the 2019 elections, he handed over to Paul Magnette for the presidency of the party. He himself, moreover, avoids answering the question of his predecessor’s future when asked. “Oh, we’ll see.” he just says before moving on.
The great electoral fight of 2024 has already begun: the first heads of the list are becoming clearer, but uncertainties remain
An honorable exit
The PS, careful to provide him with an honorable exit, is scrutinizing the international positions that might suit him. But, there are few and Di Rupo would not want any. Anyway, it seems understood – even if in politics nothing is ever final – that the current Minister-President will bear the weight of the Walloon recovery plan and of this legislature like no other – Marked by the Covid first and then by terrible floods – all the way. If the ship should sink so much, then let it be with that captain at the helm. The first of the Walloons – which he is, for the third time in 25 years – should not re-enlist if the PS has the opportunity once once more to seize the post in 2024. ‘to prove themselves there and that others believe that it is already the mandate of too much.
Elio Di Rupo, for his part, will repeat it tirelessly: he works so much and more and has no reason to be interested in these political questions for the moment. Nevertheless, he continues to cultivate his notoriety with intensity. His presence on social networks, ensured by an adviser three times younger than him but who lives, thinks, sleeps and dreams in Tik Tok and other Instagram, has ensured him for many months a significant popularity with these famous “young people”.
The PS, therefore, will he be able to do without such a voice maker when compiling its next electoral lists? The problem is that he is from Hainaut and that the places at the top of the lists for the Chamber as for the Walloon Region will be expensive. We can always put it at the end of a list to push it and make its seat alone, whatever the assembly, but it is a fate that we generally reserve for someone who would be on the go.
Europe, like others before it
And then there is Europe. The PS which is hit hard by Qatargate which took away Marc Tarabella and which places Marie Arena in a strange situation must recover its health. It will take a man and a woman to try to win at least two seats. Di Rupo might therefore be one. He would thus finish his career nicely, like others before him in a hemicycle, where it is undoubtedly less easy to make his voice heard than in the Belgian assemblies, which he knows much better. It must be said that before him, the former Prime Ministers – for those who have forgotten him, he also held this position between 2011 and 2014 – were, for the most part, used to leaving for the European institutions. Jean-Luc Dehaene and Guy Verhofstadt to the European Parliament and later Herman Van Rompuy and Charles Michel to the presidency of the European Council. Getting out of the Belgian-Belgian poto poto is also what former party presidents like Olivier Chastel and Benoît Lutgen have done. But Di Rupo loves him, this poto poto. He masters the codes.
It’s raining declarations of MEPs’ trips from Qatargate
As for a possible mandate as European commissioner, it must be remembered that it is taken into account during the negotiations for the formation of the federal government. Too random, no doubt.
Finally, it also seems useful to mention the possibility of seeing him take the presidency of an assembly. A mandate which, of course, is determined by the ballot, since, to occupy this function, it is necessary to be elected deputy of the assembly concerned. For the socialists who occupied it in the past (Collignon, Happart and Marcourt), the presidency of the Walloon Parliament acted as a way out, but we must not exclude that of the Chamber which still enjoys a certain prestige.
One thing is certain, it is hard to see the PS putting him on the authority pension. Paul Magnette knows it. It is up to him to find the best solution so as not to prevent this painter of politics from continuing to paint, but perhaps with smaller brushes.
