2023-08-10 04:52:00
A desired and successful conversion. Without bitterness or regrets, even if there were moments of doubt. Véronique Salvi, former Walloon deputy CDH (now Les Engagés), is now surveying her province of Hainaut to develop the presence of UCLouvain, the university for which she has been working for three years.
Veronique Salvi turned the page on politics on the evening of the general election of May 25, 2019, “after 23 years spent in the community and 11 electoral campaigns”. “I didn’t leave on a whim, it was a long-considered choice, she recalls. They tried to hold me back. My parents said to me: ‘Are you sure? You made so many sacrifices, you managed to find a balance in your life…’ I left with nothing, without a parachute. People didn’t believe it. For them, it is not normal to leave without knowing what we are going to do. He told me that my political label was going to be a handicap, that I would quickly reconsider my decision. But I knew what I wanted for me. We have to listen to each other, otherwise we are unhappy.”
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Véronique Cornet (MR) told me: “Politics is an environment that eats you up. Take care of yourself.” Those words resonated with me when he died.
One of the elements that weighed in the balance was the untimely death of his colleague MP Véronique Cornet (MR), on July 14, 2015, at only 46 years old. “We were close, says Ms. Salvi. His death marked me. In 2014, she told me: ‘Politics is an environment that eats you. Take care of yourself’. Those words resonated with me when he passed away.”
MP MR Véronique Cornet died
Avoid the mandate of too much
Elected MP for the first time in 2007, but active behind the scenes for much longer, “I saw a lot of people doing too many mandates”. She didn’t want this to happen to her. “I needed to find a personal balance. Politics is a very harsh environment, even if I managed to distinguish between political attacks and personal attacks. And I said to myself: ‘It’s the right time to leave’, at an age where you can still bounce back, do something else with your professional life, she smiles, when she has just celebrated her 50th birthday. . I believe the three happiest people were my husband and my children.”
However, the reconversion was not a long calm river. “The return to normal life is first of all a presence at home” which his family was no longer used to. “It’s destabilizing.”
The choice made by Véronique Salvi was carefully considered. ©camiere ennio
“I first took a big break of five months. Then, in September, after the holidays, my husband said to me: ‘Good, Véro, you have to challenge yourself a little’. It wasn’t easy. You have to redo a CV, rewrite cover letters… I went through a period of questioning”, she confesses.
The reassuring words of Emily Hoyos
For example, she had applied for the general management of Télésambre, the local television station in Charleroi. But she finished the selection process in second position, behind Valérie Dumont, who took office at the very beginning of 2020.
“At one point, I wondered if I was going to find a job. I had resumed some contacts with the political world or the associative world. I also met Emily Hoyos (the former co-president of Ecolo who now works in communication, Editor’s note). She was very reassuring. She told me to give time to time, that political labels eventually pass.
Emily Hoyos, former co-president of Ecolo, has converted to communication. ©Christophe Bortels
In May 2020, she was finally hired by UCLouvain. Today, she also collaborates with Helha (the High School of Louvain in Hainaut) and teaches a course in political communication at Ihecs (the Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Communications), in Brussels.
Politics remains a passion
“I don’t miss active politics, she says, looking back. I made the right choice. An assumed personal choice.” This does not prevent him from still following political news with interest. “I remain driven by public affairs. I continue to read the press, to take an interest in politics. In the political communication course that I give, my background helps me a lot. It allows me to better understand the underside of a negotiation, to more easily decode the positions of the parties, to also be able to invite political personalities to my course. I remain a lover of politics, but politics in the noble sense of the term.”
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Politics was tough. I drooled, cried, I had very harsh press articles. As a somewhat pretty woman, it took three times as much effort to convince.
Véronique Salvi has also kept three mandates that are not very time-consuming: at Wallonia-Brussels Education (WBE, the organizing power of official education) and “two unpaid mandates” at Télésambre and Charleroi danse.
A return to the arena, however, is not on the agenda. “Politics was tough. I drooled, cried, I had very harsh press articles. As a somewhat pretty woman, it took three times as much effort to convince. I don’t know if politics is more or less harsh today than in the past, but what is certain is that I no longer have the sacred fire, Veronique Salvi ends, smiling. For me, it’s over! Place for young people.”
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