Walloon PTB deputy Germain Mugemangango comments on the fall of the left in Wallonia in the last elections. He emphasizes that his party has best resisted the center-right surge and accuses the Socialist Party of having “campaigns for the right”.
Germain Mugemangango, the leader of the PTB in the Walloon Parliament, was the guest of Bel RTL matin. At the microphone of Martin Buxant, he returned to the victory of the center-right and the fall of the left in the elections in Wallonia.
The PTB declined in Wallonia in the last elections. You have lost two Walloon deputies. For what? Had you reached a ceiling?
I think that first of all, if we have a slightly broader focus, the PTB won the elections. So we had 200,000 more votes. Not in Wallonia, but we will come back to that. But so 200,000 more votes in one election is huge. We went from 38 to 50 deputies, including 18 workers’ deputies. For us, it’s really very important. And so we see…
How many deputies did the PTB collect in total?
There were 38 of us, we have now reached 50 deputies. With a victory, for example, in Antwerp, the stronghold of Bart De Wever, the birthplace of Vlaams Belang. And so there, we are doing better than Vlaams Belang, we are doing 22%. So it’s very important, because the entire left in Europe is thinking about how we are going to fight against the extreme right. Well, we actually do it, particularly in Antwerp.
So, why does the PTB work in Flanders and more in Wallonia or less in Wallonia?
What happened is we got 12%. So in fact, we are the left-wing party that is best resisting the decline of the left. When we see that the PS loses 3%, Ecolo loses 7%. We must recognize that there was a wave of right and center-right in Wallonia, which, I believe, surprised many observers. And so, the MR chose a very Sarkozy campaign, I would say, against the weakest.
I’m talking about you, not the MR, am I asking you the question?
Yes, but I think it’s still one of the elements. And the other element, obviously, is that we see, for example, that the PS mainly campaigned against the PTB. That’s what happened. Well yes, so when we look, for example, at the sponsored videos of the PS, so there are 20 sponsored videos against the PTB, 10 against the MR, none against Les Engagés.
They made 20 sponsored videos against the PTB?
Exactly, they really campaigned against the PTB. And so, from this point of view, instead of supporting left-wing points of view, such as, for example, as I said, the return of the pension at 65, or a real tax on millionaires, the What did PS do? He said it’s unrealistic. So in fact, he campaigned for the right.
Did he weaken you?
Yes, he weakened the left. He campaigned for the right instead of campaigning for the left. And above all, what he also did was that he gave the signal that Les Engagés was a real alternative, since he said throughout the campaign: the PTB does not want to go to power, and therefore he wanted to go with Les Engagés. And so, somewhere, ultimately, he himself ultimately set the stage for failure, or at least for the limitation, effectively, of the weight of the left during the electoral campaign.
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