Special correspondent to Bram (Aude)
“A popular and valiant left,” insisted socialist Carole Delga at the Rencontres de la gauche organized this weekend in Bram in Aude. For three years and the birth of her national ambitions, the president of the Occitanie region and of the Régions de France association has chosen this village of 3,200 inhabitants to make her political comeback, “because it is in the center of Occitanie and that Aude is a rural territory where there is a lot of anxiety and where the RN is on the rise. The three deputies of this former socialist department are all from the RN now. Bram, and the cassoulet of the closing banquet, is the rock of Solutré by Carole Delga. The place “illustrates this France far from everything in the region furthest from Paris (…) where poverty has been high for a long time.”
The regional president among the best elected in France attracted 700 people Saturday evening to the debate on “the Charlie spirit today” in the presence of Riss, director of Charlie Hebdo, and 1,800 Sunday morning to the workshops on climate action, work, school, immigration, Europe… Among the guests, Jacques Attali, the former director of the World Trade Organization Pascal Lamy, and the socialist deputies Valérie Rabault and Boris Vallaud. The agora on the search for a union of the left – without LFI, Manuel Bompard did not come – brought together the spokesperson for the PCF Ian Brossat, the presidents of the PRG Guillaume Lacroix and the MRC Jean-Luc Laurent, and the first delegate secretary of the PS Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, who opposes the Nupes alliance.
But Europe Ecologie-Les Verts MEP Karima Delli canceled her visit. “I cannot support the principle of defending the Toulouse-Castres highway,” she wrote to Carole Delga. After demonstrating in front of the Regional Hall, opponents of the highway were invited to the climate workshop on Sunday. Marion, a farmer on hunger strike, was even applauded. Carole Delga, who will meet opponents on Tuesday in Paris, told the press that “the highway is the least bad solution (…). I cannot accept that people feel far from everything. » The new communist senator Ian Brossat questioned the interest in uniting the left. “In the legislative elections, we united and we collectively failed. And on top of that we have 90 RN deputies. »
In her closing speech, delivered under a blazing sun, Carole Delga recalled her modest origins and defended “the left of reality”, sometimes mocked as “cassoulet left”, by repeating the words of Jean Jaurès: “Courage is is to go to the ideal and understand the real.” Recalling that “rarely in our history have the French been so desperate by politics”, and that there are “10 million poor people”, she attacked government policy. “Climate, poverty, water, who can argue that the market alone will find solutions? Only the President of the Republic believes in the magical flow. (…) This is why I am campaigning for a climate and progressive wealth tax which would raise 50 billion euros per year! »
She then attacked the far right. “What does Le Pen propose if not this same authoritarian liberalism and always pitting one against the other? » To fight against “this feeling of abandonment” in the countryside as well as in poor neighborhoods, the elected representative in favor of the company estimated that “there is no point in stigmatizing the bosses, but in defending those who are far away of all “. In an address to LFI, she added that “it is up to the left to make these choices. Not to the left who is screaming but to those who are working, who are looking for solutions! »
Carole Delga then made proposals. Its priority is the improvement of education. Recalling that the Occitanie region has chosen to subsidize computers, books and free school transport, she estimated that “we must return to the four and a half day week because France is the OECD country where there are the fewest school days, and where the days are too long. We have to stop with summer vacations that are too long. “.
Stressing that the production of renewable energy has increased “by 85% in Occitanie” since her election in 2016, Carole Delga declared, addressing the Greens, that she “believes in a positive ecology and not in punitive degrowth . » She proposed putting an end to the “absurd European electricity market” and made a strong proposal: “We must cap the price of gas thanks to the contribution on profits made from fossil fuels. »
