2023-09-17 16:45:00
The appointment of Saliha Raiss as alderman in Molenbeek, even though she wears the veil, has led to tensions within the municipal majority. The MR opposed it from the majority, while the opposition supported it. What did you think of the intervention of Georges-Louis Bouchez, when we had not heard alderman MR Françoise Schepmans on the subject?
This shows that there is unease and hypocrisy within the MR on these subjects. In the MR, we either don’t look at the municipal lists that are in the running, or we pretend. Saliha Raiss was present on the lists. She campaigned and was elected. It is therefore logical that if a position of responsibility opens up, she can carry out the function.
Marc Uyttendaele considered that there was a “compromise from PS Brussels”. The party office has positioned itself in favor of religious symbols in the administration, but not for positions of authority.
This disappoints me a little regarding Marc Uyttendaele, but I would not comment on him, out of respect for his wife (Laurette Onkelinx) for whom I worked for many years. But the party makes a distinction between an elected official and a civil servant.
Another subject is making the news: the Gare du Midi. According to Pascal Smet, the basic problem there is the presence of undocumented immigrants, who must be actively expelled.
I do not agree with Pascal Smet when he says that we must expel these people. If they are there, it is not for pleasure, they fled their country for very specific reasons. We have a duty to support them and give them an answer. The real problem, both for the Gare du Midi and the Gare du Nord, is disinvestment. It is the responsibility of those who have the legal responsibility to manage these two stations, namely the Federal Government. Under the former MR-N-VA legislature, the federal police budget in 2015 decreased linearly by 4% in 2015 and by 2% each year, from 2016 to 2019, for personnel appropriations. And it was the MR who had responsibility for transport and the SNCB, via Ms. Galant and Mr. Bellot. He participated in disinvestments in stations.
Pascal Smet: “The real problem at the Gare du Midi is the undocumented: we must expel them very actively”
According to David Leisterh, president of the Brussels MR, “Rudi Vervoort watches the Gare du Midi burn” and refuses to exercise security authority.
One of the problems we have in Brussels is that we have not given enough training to certain elected officials, who do not differentiate between the skills of each. This security responsibility initially belonged to the railway police, which does not depend on the Region or the municipalities. This right-wing party (the MR), which claims to defend security, participated in a right-wing government, without the left. And the first thing he did, in 2015, was disinvest in the police and justice. A year ago, a police officer died at Gare du Nord, following the alarm had already been sounded. Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden (CD&V) came to meet us. Since then, it’s been radio silence, we haven’t seen anything coming.
How do you interpret the position of the CD&V and the MR?
Some political parties participate in this idea that we must dismantle the federal state and give more powers to the regions. However, I remain convinced that sovereign powers must remain with the federal State. The MR, for its part, is following a logic which aims to run more and more behind the extreme right. Which worries me, because I believe that the MR endangers living together in Brussels and, through its postures, stigmatizes, divides and tries to pit people once morest each other. The MR follows a very conservative logic and does not provide solutions. Quite simply because this party is no longer in phase with the reality in Brussels. We can clearly see that they are trying to flirt with certain neighborhoods in Brussels.
There is a desire to recruit people from diversity. Isn’t that, on the contrary, a good thing?
If these are just facade meetings, to try to lull and hypnotize a certain electorate, they are on the wrong track. People are not fooled by the positioning of the MR, which is above all there to run behind the extreme right, with a stigmatizing, conservative, rejectionist discourse. But people are aware of the positions that have been taken by this party on several issues. This is what will determine the result of an election tomorrow, not the fact of going to a market.
Governing with them would then be excluded in Brussels?
I am not the president of the Brussels Federation of the PS (Editor’s note: it’s Ahmed Laaouej). But if the MR continues to have a discourse close to the hard right and the extreme right, it will be complicated to govern with him.
Do you prefer to govern with the PTB?
The PTB gestures a lot in parliamentary assemblies but announces that it will not participate in any government. The PTB is the MR’s best ally.
During the summer universities, Paul Magnette defended the record of the PS in governments. What can you defend in Brussels?
Our difference with the MR is that we have social achievements. We have extended free public transport (STIB) to under 25s and over 65s. We obtained 17,000 housing solutions for households, we increased the number of people who benefited from rent allowance. We have succeeded in ensuring that social housing is no longer so energy-intensive. It would have been more complicated with the MR.
Things have been achieved, but at what cost? In the Echo, Christophe Magdalijns (Défi) estimates that “if nothing is done, the Brussels Region will experience its worst budgetary and financial crisis.”.
There is indeed a serious concern at the budgetary level. But we shouldn’t be alarmed.
There are still quantified reasons to be so. The debt will reach 13.2 billion and has more than doubled.
Budget Minister Sven Gatz (Open VLD) is working on solutions that will improve the situation.
Shouldn’t we also reduce expenses?
What expenses?
That’s a political choice.
All the expenses that have been made are political choices.
Bart De Wever said he hoped that the PS would finally negotiate confederalism.
Confederalism is a fantasy of Bart De Wever which, in my opinion, will remain so.
However, this was discussed following the last elections between the PS and the N-VA. But it was said that the Brussels socialists had been the most offensive in saying “No”.
Effectively. We had a discussion within the party and the people of Brussels expressed their reluctance. And the entire office concluded that that was not an option. I stay on the same wavelength.
“The Gare du Midi is a house that has been burning for many years, and Rudi Vervoort watches it burn”
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