“Happiness is us,” said Fabien Roussel to his supporters, Sunday March 27 in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne). On the occasion of a new campaign meeting, the communist presidential candidate once again defended his program of “France on happy days”, promising justice, respect and dignity.
Two weeks before the first round of April 10, this new campaign meeting was organized at the Halle aux grains, a well-known symphony concert hall in the Pink City that can accommodate some 2,200 people.
Pierre Lacaze, departmental secretary of the Communist Party of Haute-Garonne, had also indicated his intention to add 500 additional places, around screens installed on the forecourt of the concert hall.
You are the best in France.
You workers, craftsmen, merchants, nurses.
Yes, you are the best in France!#RousselToulouse pic.twitter.com/djSbz3QAlz
— Fabien Roussel (@Fabien_Roussel) March 27, 2022
The candidate’s team made no secret of it: this gathering aimed to reach a wider audience than the usual circle of activists and supporters. An intention clearly displayed from the opening of the meeting since Fabien Roussel thanked the representatives of “the whole left”, but also “those, without a label, without a party, not even from the left and who join us”, gratifying them with a “you are here at home”.
“You are beautiful”
Continuing its momentum, the candidate devoted a large part of his speech to the enumeration of these French people who are “the best of France”. Nurses, railway workers, “metalworkers”, employees of supermarkets, home helpers, farmers, craftsmen, engineers or even teachers: all the “workers” were greeted by Fabien Roussel.
“I want to tell you that you are beautiful, we don’t tell you enough […] I see your faces, I know your demands of dignity, of respect. You give without counting, you are the first to do more when necessary, to commit yourself, you are generous, generous”.
Referring in particular to the pandemic, Fabien Roussel thanked these French people for having stood up to the trials” and “continued tirelessly to carry the general interest”, without giving in “to this small band of contemptuous technocrats who have traded their brains for a excel table”.
“A month of war, two years of pandemic, five years of Macron, 30 years of austerity policy and France, despite all that, it holds firm”. It is “thanks to you, he launched to his audience. Because you are the spine that allows it to stand up.
“It’s time to listen to the employees”
According to Fabien Roussel, “the Macrons, the Pécresses, the Zemmours, the Le Pens” may be different candidates but their program is “common”: “The boss of Medef speaks, they execute”, accuses-t- he. For his part, the communist candidate believes that “it is time to listen to the employees”.
This is why Fabien Roussel wants to “increase wages, for all and for all, and achieve equal pay between women and men”. He pleads for a minimum wage of “€1,900 gross, or €1,500 net. “I count in gross because I want salary and social contributions, to finance Social Security”, developed the candidate. It is thus distinguished from “those who […] promise wage increases while reducing social security contributions. “With them, tomorrow, the Sécu will be bankrupt, they will make you pay your health costs and the mutuals will increase again”.
Listening to the world of work also means “eradicating unemployment” and ensuring “a dignified retirement for those who have worked all their lives”. For Fabien Roussel, this not only means guaranteeing “a minimum pension of €1,200”, but also preserving “the right to retire at age 60”. “Because the healthy life expectancy of a worker today is 59 years” and “because at 60, millions of employees can already take it no more”.
Recognizing Elders and Supporting Youth
Based on current events, and in particular the recent scandal linked to the treatment of residents of Ehpad Orpea, Fabien Roussel promised “to put an end” to these establishments “overpriced, more ready to force-feed shareholders than to feed their boarders”. “No more for-profit nursing homes […] They will pass under public control, in a great public service of old age”.
At the same time, the PCF candidate wants “that our children can escape the precariousness and worries of everyday life”. Fabien Roussel wants to allow young French people to “study without breaking the bank” but also to “access a real job, with a real contract and a good salary”.
It starts with the school, in danger according to him because “the liberals” want to “manage it like a business” by putting establishments in competition. “The autonomy of schools means that tomorrow we will have rich schools for rich kids and poor schools for everyone else. This is the new separatism”.
Rather, he advocates a “lengthening of the time spent at school”, with the end of homework. They will be made in class, to “put an end to this unbearable inequality which means that some have parents who can help their children and others cannot”.
Setting the goal of “zero young unemployed people” Fabien Roussel also castigated the home delivery platforms “Uber, Deliveroo” which, according to him, exploit “bike couriers […] supposedly auto-entrepreneurs” but who, in reality, are “paid by the task, paid with the slingshot, without Secu, without anything to protect them”. “With us, it will be over, warns the candidate. These platforms that exploit poverty will have to respect labor law”.
The redistribution of wealth
To fulfill his requirements of “dignity” and “respect”, the candidate Roussel wants to “say stop at high cost”. Referring to “the rise in gas, electricity and fuel prices”, he notably scratched the Total group which, according to him, “gave its shareholders up to 7 billion euros”.
To finance his very social program, Fabien Roussel thus displays his intention to “go get” the money “where it is”. To “increase the state budget”, it is, according to him, “increase the taxes of the richest and of capital”, but also of “producing our wealth differently” and “deciding how to distribute it, use it “.
The “France of happy days” thus intends to bet on “the world of work and creation” rather than on “finance”. “The most beautiful value of France is you, assured Fabien Roussel to his audience. We will not rebuild France with depressed, worn-out French people in poor health […] French people who are doing well, it’s a France that is doing well […] We are more efficient than them because we invest in people”.
Anchoring his speech in the news, Fabien Roussel promised to hunt for tax evasion, drawing a parallel with the accusations of tax optimization targeting the consulting firm McKinsey. Emphasizing the “2.4 billion” euros given to “these private firms to carry out the work that the administration could have carried out”, the candidate assured that this represented “120 new schools” or “26 new maternities”.
Claiming to want to put an end to this kind of action, the candidate pleaded for the establishment of the “withholding tax on the profits of multinationals”. It also plans to award the Legion of Honor to whistleblowers who denounce these frauds.
A “one and indivisible” Republic
Worried about the “disintegration of the Republic”, Fabien Roussel finally deplored “the decomposition of the French nation”, illustrated according to him by the situation in Corsica.
Describing the murder of Yvan Colonna as “shame”, the PCF candidate however felt that Emmanuel Macron added “dishonor by considering autonomy for Corsica”. A word of which no one really understands the meaning according to him, since “everyone puts in it what they want”.
“Prefect Erignac died of three bullets in the back because he served the Republic and, 25 years later, is this the Republic’s response? […] I do not believe that the horizon for France is to become an aggregate of autonomous regions, where labor law would be variable in geometry, where the minimum wage would vary from one region to another, where the school would change region to region”.
Self-proclaimed defender of a “one and indivisible” Republic, Fabien Roussel called on his listeners to become “happiness activists” for the France of happy days. all his listeners.
“I know French people who voted one day on the left, one day on the right, one day for no one. I want to tell you that there are no good and bad voters. There are simply French men and women who make their choice in conscience. I also want to tell you that my door is wide open […] We are going to win, it’s unmistakable[…] the question is when.”