With the death of André Lajoinie this Tuesday at the age of 94, a historic figure of the French Communist Party is disappearing. That of a leader who experienced the last hours of glory of the workers' party but also the beginning of its decline, never far from Georges Marchais of whom he was faithful. During the 1988 presidential election, it was up to him, “ [son] friend André Lajoinie”, then president of the communist deputies, that the secretary general of the PCF entrusts the heavy task of representing his people in the race for the Élysée.
The mission seems like a poisoned gift as the formation is losing momentum after participating in the first government of François Mitterrand. There will be no miracles. Faced with the dissident candidacy of the “renovator” Pierre Juquin, he received only 6.76% of the votes, half the score of Marchais in 1981.
This presidential candidacy is the apotheosis of an unexpected political career for this man, born on December 26, 1929 in the small Corrèze village of Chasteaux, within a family of small farmers. “A great memory,” he recalled in the 2000s. The campaign lasted almost a year. We really debated. I even did Questions at home with Anne Sinclair and Pierre-Luc Séguillon in front of six million viewers. »
At the time, the obscure apparatchik of Place du Colonel-Fabien, often good-natured but sometimes curt, made himself known to the general public. On the first channel, the satirical program “le Bébête Show” presents him in the form of Dédé Lajoitriste, a dog mishandled by Georges Marchais' puppet.
Seriously injured in the head in a demonstration in 1958
However, nothing predestined André Lajoinie to be in the light, he who saw himself becoming a peaceful farmer like his parents. His family did not have the means to pay for his studies, so he stopped at the school certificate and worked on the family farm. But influenced by his father, a radical socialist, and a cousin, a communist railway worker involved in the Resistance, he was passionate about politics and “naturally” joined the Jeunesses Communistes then the PC at the age of 19.
There he became a specialist in agricultural issues, carrying out union activities at the same time. In July 1958, he was seriously injured in the head by the police during a demonstration against supporters of French Algeria in the streets of Brive (Corrèze). After he underwent trepanation, the Party sent him to convalesce in Czechoslovakia.
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It was also at the request of the Party that he went to Paris in the early 1960s to join the agrarian section of the PC central committee. Then began a rapid rise which saw him join the central committee in 1972 then the political bureau four years later, in the wake of Georges Marchais. At that time, he followed the honorum course of the great leaders of the PCF. He is thus one of the last leaders to follow the teachings of the cadres of Moscow, the “mother house” of the international communist movement.
He then embodies a rather orthodox line. André Lajoinie will also assert himself on the national scene at the time of the breakdown of the union of the left. It was he who, in 1979, announced in L'Humanité that the PCF was drawing a line under the common program signed seven years earlier with the Socialist Party.
Mocked on a poster jumping with a parachute wearing clogs
But this ambitious quadra still lacks an electoral mandate. He found it in the communist land of Allier where he was dispatched in 1973. He won the third constituency of the department in 1978. During his campaign, his opponent then mocked him on a poster showing him jumping from a plane by parachute shod with clogs. André Lajoinie will turn the caricature to his advantage by proudly highlighting his peasant origins, which is popular in this rural territory.
He was elected until 2002, with the exception of a parenthesis between 1993 and 1997 after being beaten by the UDF mayor of Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule. In 1981, he headed the communist group in the Assembly for twelve years and became a key figure among the communists.
“Events, voters, colleagues have spoiled me”
In 1982, he denounced the “gifts to employers” and the denial of the promises of the Mauroy government, which nevertheless included four communist ministers. His stooped silhouette, head tucked into his shoulders, then appears on the small screens. We notably see him debate in 1987 with Jean-Marie Le Pen in front of whom he brandishes a photograph of deported corpses to denounce his comments on the gas chambers “detail of history”. A game which launches his presidential campaign for which he does not obtain the expected score.
After his fifth term as deputy, André Lajoinie left the Palais-Bourbon to settle in Bourbonnais in Vichy (Allier), his adopted home, where he kept himself away from political life. This history buff, passionate about the period of the Occupation, spent his retirement reading, particularly biographies. In 2002, at the time of his retirement, “Dédé”, the young farmer from Corrèze who became a candidate for the Élysée, modestly summed up a life in the service of the Party: “The events, the voters, the colleagues have spoiled me. I had a happy career. »
