2023-08-26 05:14:00
As a child, Sophie Rohonyi wanted to become a journalist “to denounce injustices and precisely to highlight injustices that deserved solutions”. Except that his entourage pushed him to do law because of the opportunities. During her studies, she discovered other injustices which gave her “even more desire, not only to denounce them, but to act on them directly”.
After a stint at the Center for Secular Action, the lawyer from Rhode-Saint-Genèse became a parliamentary collaborator for 5 years. The question of decumulation then infused the amaranth party and Olivier Maingain decided not to re-enter the federal lists, leaving him the place alongside the new party president, François De Smet. Today, the federal deputy is also president of the Council of French-speaking women of Belgium (CFFB).
You have a particularity at DéFI. Unlike the other parties, you are numerically very few in the House.
“It’s a daily challenge. We are only two out of 150 with three collaborators to follow regarding fifteen commissions, where most of my colleagues follow one or two commissions at the most. Despite this, we are doing a considerable amount of work which is recognized by our peers. Even recently, Kristof Calvo (Groen) in the Constitution Review Committee, in which we are working on the issue of party financing, expressly said that DéFI was largely insufficiently financed in view of the work he was doing in Parliament.
You have to pick your fights, sort of.
”It leads us to make hard choices in our fights. And it is also felt in the constraints which are those of not being a recognized group. In the Federal Parliament, it is necessary to have 5 deputies to be a recognized parliamentary group. This is not the case today for DéFI.”
Concretely, what does this imply?
“When there are discussions relating to the Prime Minister’s declarations, each time on the second Tuesday of October, at the start of the school year or on the budget, we have much less speaking time than the others. One systematically intervenes following the others. Which implies having to also find arguments that have not been put forward by the other parties involved.
Sophie Rohonyi wears the colors of DéFI in parliament with its president François De Smet. ©JC Guillaume
And in committee?
“We don’t have the right to vote, we don’t have group collaborators. In plenary session, we are entitled to only one topical question. This means that when there are several current topics that emerge, we must choose the only current topic on which we are authorized to intervene. It is very frustrating. The challenge for us for 2024 is to become a group of five deputies. It would change our human and financial resources and it would allow us to make a difference in the composition of a federal government. Unfortunately, I am very afraid that the composition of the federal government in 2024 will become impossible.”
What are your projections?
”I follow the polls a lot and I observe a more than terrifying progression of extremist and nationalist parties. When I was a parliamentary assistant, the Vlaams Belang had three seats. In the last elections, they had 18. And in the next elections, they are predicted to have 25. So one seat out of six. And if we count the seats of the N-VA, the Vlaams Belang and the PTB, the extremists risk making up half of the hemicycle.”
So you place the N-VA in the extremist parties?
”For me, nationalism is a form of extremism. It is a withdrawal into oneself. The fact of denying rights to certain people, of considering French-speakers as second-class citizens or of denying the very existence of Brussels and therefore denying rights to people from Brussels… The language used to describe Walloons… Yes, it is a party that is extremist both in its ideas and in its words.”
What relationship do you have with other bands?
”I greet all my colleagues, with the exception of my colleagues from Vlaams Belang. And once more, it’s complicated for some commissions. I have no cordial relationship and even less friendship with the elected members of Vlaams Belang. On the other hand, with the elected representatives of the N-VA, I work. We are in opposition together.”
Is it the obligation to work on certain files in common that constrains you?
“Typically the Covid commission, which brings together Committed, PTB and N-VA. We have totally different sensitivities, but during the health crisis, we made the same criticisms. We had to work together to amend and make the government realize that on certain measures, it was going too far.
During the health crisis, was Parliament sidelined?
”Parliament has been presented too much with a fait accompli. For example, I remain cruelly unsatisfied with the recommendations that were issued by the special commission, which were well below what the experts, caregivers, patient associations, epidemiologists, etc. were asking for.
Has Parliament’s role been strengthened in recent months?
”I don’t think there is a way for Parliament to do it. The parties have their own mode of operation. Their way of doing politics, in any case of doing their parliamentary work, changes completely depending on whether you are an opposition party or a majority party. We have always said to ourselves that we make constructive opposition, so we are not here to swing slogans. But in this case, facing us, we have parties that are constantly bickering. In the majority, there are button presses who are there only to serve soup to ministers.”
When the Iranian visa crisis reached its climax, suggesting a fall of the government
It’s hard, as a matter of fact.
“Vivaldi MPs are button presses, with very few exceptions. Depending on the news, when issues affect public opinion as was the case with visas for Iranians, some deputies say to themselves that things are not going well. At that point, they regain their freedom of speech to be able to tell the minister that things are not going well, but without going all the way. That she should have quit. And it’s the same thing for a whole series of files. There is a real partisanship that padlocks the word of the Vivaldi deputies.
Is it something observable?
“Themselves tell me so. They tell me that they are very uncomfortable with certain issues, that they would like to vote once morest certain texts but that they cannot because they are bound by the government agreement. Or they would like to support some of my texts but cannot because I am in opposition. So, either they reject my lyrics and leave it at that, or they appropriate our ideas, put Vivaldi’s touch on them and get them voted on. But that’s not very correct.”
Do you have an example?
”Homosexual blood donation. We wanted to put an end to the required sexual abstinence of twelve months. They preferred to reduce it to four months. It is progress. But at the same time, it remains extremely stigmatizing for the people concerned and it is not even justified from a health point of view. I am therefore shocked by this particracy and I have not seen any change in recent months. But I hope that will change in the next few months. I even think that as we approach the electoral deadlines, the Vivaldi parties will regain a certain freedom of speech to be able to stand out.
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