It is a dinosaur of Belgian politics who has just disappeared: Jean-Maurice Dehousse died this Thursday at the age of 86. This is the end of the journey, for this Liège resident with a very Florentine character, skilful, cunning, who was a deputy, senator, Minister of Culture, European parliamentarian, but above all a spur on the left.
His prosperous period was in the early eighties, when he was the first president of the regional executive, the ancestor of the Walloon government. Economic policy was his strong point: it was at this time that he supported the Fabrique Nationale with public aid, provided that it maintained its number of jobs at six thousand workers.
Since then, time has passed, industry in Liège has collapsed, perhaps because the state reforms were too slow, too late. His federalist convictions marginalized him within his party. But he is not afraid of being right alone, against everyone. And when the Coolsien socialists want to lay off a thousand municipal agents from Liège, it’s the frontal opposition. It is the time of the PS Bis.
Five years later, he still managed to become mayor of “on“city. But he gets bogged down in the management of daily life, and he has to ingloriously abandon his mayor’s scarf, which he trades for a seat as an MEP to finish his career. End? Not really. He then becomes an almost ordinary activist again. , and for about twenty years, he becomes again what he has never ceased to be: an agitator.