Invited to Europe Soir Week-end, the LR deputy for the first constituency of Lot Aurélien Pradié returned to Pap Ndiaye’s statements on secularism, two years after the death of Samuel Paty. The Minister of National Education explained in particular that according to him, secularism was the fact of ridding the school of external political and religious influences. Aurélien Pradié, for his part, insists that the school “is a sacred territory in which one does not claim to belong”.
Towards a more popular right?
However, for the member, the minister does not take the subject head on as he claims. “We are no longer making big statements.” According to him, the minister “is naive”, and he sees “perhaps a bit of political cowardice”, he said. Aurélien Pradié insists on his desire to “reinstall authority at school”, in particular via a “unique outfit”. The Republican deputy gives his own definition of secularism: “we have to talk about it, the teachers have to talk about it and give the keys to the students, of course. But a 12-year-old kid has no religious beliefs, has no no political convictions. He has the religious and political conviction of his parents.”
For the deputy, the school is one of the subjects that the right must appropriate. Aurélien Pradié wants to keep the sovereign fundamentals but also “talk about other subjects”. “What do we have to say about ecology? I refuse to let Sandrine Rousseau talk about ecology.” The deputy admits it, “on the right we talk about it little”. “What do we have to say about water? It is not a small subject, it is an absolutely fundamental national and geopolitical subject.”
“Extending the retirement age is a mistake”
Candidate for the presidency of the Republicans, Aurélien Pradié advocates being the man of change, which differs from these two main competitors, Éric Ciotti and Bruno Retailleau. The Lotois wants to “review everything” after the party’s slap in the last presidential election. “Our members want us to make a fresh start on the right,” he says.
“When our political family, like others, obsess over speaking only to one category of the population, it does not succeed.” The candidate assumes to think things differently. He explains in particular that his political friends do not have the same point of view as him on the question of pensions. “Extending the retirement age is a mistake,” he promises. “The real subject is to clean up some social aid, some public spending.” A speech “breaking with what the right has been for 10 years, with the right of failure”, specifies Aurélien Pradié. “But I try to reconnect with a discourse of a popular right that respects what works hard.”
The deputy for Lot assures him, if there is one thing to remember from his career and his political convictions, on the eve of the vote for the presidency of his party, “it is the popular right, and this n It’s not a slogan. The one that speaks to everyone, and the one that speaks to all subjects”.