Eread since 2017 from a traditionally socialist land, the deputy (Socialist Party) of Landes Boris Vallaud – who succeeded the Mitterrandian Henri Emmanuelli – saw his constituency swing very largely – and for the first time – in the vote in favor of the Rally national (RN). On the evening of the first round of the legislative elections on June 30 and July 7, he was only a few votes ahead of his far-right opponent, in his own village. He wins. But the “humanist outpourings” around the Republican front leave him unmoved, tired of “moral indignations” and anathemas against the French who “would have voted wrongly”while 8.7 million votes went to the RN.
Beyond the feeling of guilt (“Have we done enough? »), ce “political shock” imposes a “examination of conscience” to the left-wing elected official and former deputy secretary general of the Elysée (2014-2016), who notes that a large part of what he defends and votes for from Paris is “off the mark”, “next to lives”. “I cannot be right alone despite all the electoral and human evidence”he writes in a small book (160 pages), Permanently (Odile Jacob, 15 euros), in bookstore Wednesday.
To understand “what the people are asking for, and how to respond”Boris Vallaud suggests returning to reality (“say what you see, see what you see”) and to “human things”. What he does every Friday in his office in Saint-Sever, 5,000 inhabitants, “small house with slightly faded red shutters and rusty hinges”where he receives his constituents. A “confessional permanence” where distraught women and men come to share their worries and their sorrows, even though they often have no one left to turn to.
“It’s distressing”
There is Madame B. and her “bad life” who sees the machine seize up due to a bad check for 20 euros, signed for his village festival. “I tell you, you’re going to yell at me…”she apologizes. There is this breeder, from father to son, who barely makes a living from his work, this battered woman who is looking for housing for herself and her children, or this bankrupt cheesemaker, who hands the MP his account books. “Everything is there, in my hands, he leaves it up to me,” he told me. These acts of faith in the deputy are distressing”writes Vallaud who calls him later to get news: “Don’t let go of a person in distress even if you can’t do much for them or have tried everything. »
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