2023-11-01 06:32:31
Vooruit allegedly paid money to a dismissed employee to dissuade her from taking legal action. The succession of cases might harm the party’s campaign.
The tiles seem to be stacking up among the Flemish socialists of Vooruit. Latest episode with this employee to whom the party allegedly paid thousands of euros to dissuade her from taking legal action or speaking to the press regarding a sexual harassment case.
The facts were reported by the daily Het Nieuwsblad. We can read that the employee was attacked by a colleague in a cafe following another colleague’s wedding party, even though she had already received inappropriate messages from him. The victim sounded the alarm to Vooruit management, but she was fired on September 19, 2022 by the party president, Conner Rousseau, due to professional inadequacy.
The Institute for the Equality of Women and Men wanted to take legal action, but the party would have offered the dismissed collaborator a sum of money so that she would keep quiet. There is talk of “several thousand euros in additional severance pay”.
Vooruit described the Nieuwsblad article as “incomplete and containing only one version of the facts”, indicating that this dismissal was the “result of a succession of negative evaluations”. Party staff members also published an open letter on Monday denouncing “a presentation that is tendentious and disconnected from the reality of how our organization operates.”
“These cases risk having a negative impact on the party’s future campaign.”
Coincidence or intention to harm?
Is this succession of cases the result of chance? Or should we see an intention to harm a party which has regained its health in the polls since the advent of Conner Rousseau? “In any case, this is what is said within the party,” notes Nicolas Bouteca, political scientist at the University of Ghent (UGent). Vooruit is in fact regularly credited with 16% of voting intentions, behind Vlaams Belang and the N-VA, but far ahead of the other parties.
“Perhaps the omnipresence of Conner Rousseau in the media ended up turning once morest him,” Bouteca further suggests. “These affairs risk in any case having a negative impact on the party’s future campaign”he predicts.
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