« Ne have lost a man of great humanity. » It was with these words on X that the national secretary of the PCF and presidential candidate, Fabien Roussel, announced on Tuesday, November 26, the death of his illustrious ancestor. Former leader of the French Communist Party and candidate in the 1988 presidential election, André Lajoinie, has died at the age of 94. Fabien Roussel praised “his fights for the working classes, for his territory, for France”.
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Born on December 26, 1929, André Lajoinie, son of Corrèze peasants, embodied for more than half a century the man of the apparatus devoted to his party. Child of a poor family of farmers, forced to abandon school after his school certificate to help in the fields, André Lajoinie defended “a predominantly family-based agriculture, with structures on a human scale”. “The son of farmers, he had a love of people deep in his heart. Member of Parliament, leader of the PCF, André was a fierce defender of the working class,” party spokesperson Ian Brossat wrote on X.
ALSO READ June 27, 1972, the thunderclap of the Joint ProgramAndré Lajoinie was “a figure of the committed left, that of activists who give everything for what they believe in. Respectful thoughts for his family and his comrades,” added PS deputy Emmanuel Grégoire, candidate for mayor of Paris. André Lajoinie joined the Jeunesses Communistes (JC) in the aftermath of the war, in 1946. A pure and hardline activist, seriously injured in 1958 during a demonstration against the Algerian war, he followed a very classic path: central party school (1964), Moscow cadre school (1967), entry into the Central Committee in 1972 and the Political Bureau in 1976.
Active under Georges Marchais
Consecration arrived in 1982, with his entry into the party secretariat, then headed by Georges Marchais. In the 1988 presidential election, André Lajoinie led the difficult battle against president-candidate François Mitterrand and won a small 6.76%, which ensured his party would be reimbursed for campaign expenses. This specialist in agricultural issues was then a deputy for Allier from 1978 to 1993, then re-elected in 1997. He threw in the towel in 2002, at the age of 72, and decided not to run again.
