The probable tandems
Who will step up to replace them? The tandem applications must be submitted by midnight this Sunday evening at the latest. At the time of writing, according to several internal sources, the two expected duos seem to be confirmed: on the one hand, former federal MP Gilles Vanden Burre and the Secretary of State for Equal Opportunities, Marie-Colline Leroy; on the other hand, former federal MP Samuel Cogolati and Marie Lecocq, the co-president of the Brussels federation of French-speaking Greens.
Zakia Khattabi: “Ecolo will not win by simply doing differently from Jean-Marc Nollet”
Let’s be careful, however. Other “surprise” applications could be submitted in the evening this Sunday, at the last minute. It is not impossible, judges an informant, for tandems that have gone under the radar to launch at the last moment.
The fact remains that participating in the race for the presidency of Ecolo is a challenge. We had known more favorable political contexts… The party, via a decision of the Federation Council (the internal parliament of the Greens), wanted to move forward at a forced march in order to (very) quickly choose two new heads. The co-presidency must be in place by July 21, for a four-year term. This future duo will have the mission of leading the troops into the battle of the municipal and provincial elections on October 13.
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In other words, the next co-presidents will not have time to fine-tune a complete program to revive the party before the local elections. It will be more a question of limiting the damage… The Greens cannot afford an electoral snub of the same magnitude as that of June 9. The new co-presidents will have to immediately breathe new life into it, but especially in terms of communication.
Within the training, the principles of political ecology, which go far beyond just environmental issues, are obviously not called into question. Where the problem lies is in their popularization. The general public broke away from the fight led by Écolo for several reasons. Among the external factors, let us cite the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian ogre and the Covid pandemic which have pushed the fight against global warming into the shadows.
Zakia Khattabi (Ecolo): “Vivaldi was a struggle. It was as if, every day, we were renegotiating the majority agreement…”
Among the internal factors which explain Ecolo’s rout: the Greens’ interventions in the media “do not print” or, in any case, are less audible than those of tribunes like Georges-Louis Bouchez, boss of the MR, or Raoul Hedebouw, president of the PTB. Between a political passion which does not appear in the party’s DNA and sluggish communication, there is undoubtedly a middle way to identify.
Refocus or radicalize?
In the longer term, the future co-presidency will have to work on at least two major projects. The first: how to win back the votes of the electors stolen by Les Engagés and the MR on June 9? To this end, should we refocus Ecolo on the left-right axis as in the time of Jean-Michel Javaux? Or should the Greens defend a more radical, more striking line, but one that could frighten people?
As a second major project, the Greens will have to find a way to overcome the political curse that pursues them: after each government participation, their party receives a slap in the face from the voters. Greens suffers from these violent and systematic backlashes. They also involve a human price: many collaborators must be dismissed for financial reasons and valuable personalities who are not re-elected leave active political life…
Ecolo rout, Philippe Lamberts reveals his truths
