2023-05-01 12:33:45
“In our country, billionaires pay 0% tax on the capital gains they make with their shares. Zero. While workers are taxed up to half of their income. Yes, Belgium is a tax hell for the workers. But a tax haven for the ultra-rich and the multinationals. A small club of super-rich gets richer and richer, while those who create the wealth, the workers, have a lot making ends meet. And what is the government doing? It is increasing the excise duty on our energy bills. That’s why we say with the PTB: enough is enough. We say: tax the rich!” declared the president, Raoul Hedebouw, during a meeting on May 1 organized in Brussels, place Anneessens.
According to the PTB, there is a majority in Belgium to make the better-off in society contribute. “Our tax can be voted on tomorrow,” added Mr. Hedebouw, who notably addressed the PS. The tax on securities accounts put in place under this legislature by the Vivaldi coalition is not a convincing option, he believes, because the “super rich” easily avoid it.
The communists call for “changing the balance of power”, in parliament but also in the street with the unions. “There are obviously liberals like Georges-Louis Bouchez and his Mouvement des Riches in our path. We will always fight them. But the problem is that there are also socialists like Paul Magnette. Those who make big statements of the left on May 1, but who put them in the trash on May 2”, launched Mr. Hedebouw.
The PTB wants to be the “backbone” of the left in Belgium today. He prides himself on having had the “white coats” fund adopted, which aims to revalorize the nursing profession and on having been the first to demand the return of VAT to 6% on energy. The PS is one of his targets but also Vooruit, which he points to the supposed rapprochement with the N-VA for the next legislature and the recent proposals on unemployment. “Conner Rousseau wants to punish the unemployed instead of attacking the super-rich. Those who want leftist politics must turn to leftist parties. With the PTB, we are here to build a real leftist alternative, at the North and South of the country,” he said.
At the forefront of the issue of parliamentary pensions, the PTB – whose representatives are required to be satisfied with an average salary – has also claimed responsibility for… the Paris Commune. “We are not the first to want to abolish all the privileges of politicians. We are Marxists. We know the historic struggle of the working class for democracy. In 1871, during the Paris Commune, all political privileges were abolished. abolished and politicians had to live on a worker’s salary”, recalled Mr. Hedebouw.
This requirement distinguishes it, to hear it, from another party which has targeted the elites: the Vlaams Belang. “We have repeatedly proposed to halve the salaries of politicians. But from the far right, it is always a big ‘niet’. The Vlaams Belang always claims ‘our people first “This ‘our people first’ is in reality ‘our privileges first’,” said Mr. Hedebouw. ”That is the true face of Vlaams Belang, a party at the service of the establishment, at the service of the richest and which itself benefits from privileges”.
Labor Day on Monday took on a special meaning for Delhaize workers mobilized against the vast franchise plan of the Lion brand. Agnieszka, a warmly applauded CNE delegate, spoke to the Marxist activists. She denounced the “uberization” of the economy at work in her sector. “Today is the end of 8 weeks of strike… Tomorrow, the 9th begins, and we are not going to let go,” she warned.
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