Amine El Khatmi is the founder and president of the Republican Spring. He wrote
Combats pour la France
(ed Fayard) in 2019 and publishes
Printemps republican
(ed L'Observatoir) in this fall.
FIGAROVOX. - The first pages of your book retrace your roaming throughout France. What conclusions do you draw at the end of this journey?
Amine EL KHATMI. -
I wanted to go and meet this France of sub-prefectures, peri-urban or rural, this France invisible from city centers and major metropolitan centers.
The French who live there are faced with a triple insecurity:
Economic insecurity since they suffer more than others from the damage of globalization and the country's deindustrialization.
Physical insecurity, these territories are no longer spared by thefts, attacks or gang phenomena as we saw in the south of Essonne a few months ago.
And a cultural insecurity that Laurent Bouvet hypothesized very early on, when the feeling of abandonment grew, illustrated by the disappearance of public services (closures of classes, then schools, rail lines, hospitals), places sociable dailies (cafes, bakeries, mini markets) and which poses a threat to our lifestyles and our freedoms, particularly in the face of the rise of political Islam.
It is as if the citizen had a moral contract with the Republic and the latter no longer fulfilled its part of the contract.
Amine El Khatmi
It is as if the citizen had a moral contract with the Republic and the latter no longer fulfilled its part of the contract. In thousands of villages in our country, the last place of sociability is the bistro which also acts as a post office, bread depot and bank agency. Faced with this, part of the left considered that it was necessary to turn away from these French people, treated as little white handsome and racists who left to hide in provincial pavilions, considering that they were no longer recoverable and that it was better to build a majority in the ballot box by trying to aggregate the votes of women, LGBT people or children of immigrants.
The challenge for us is to speak to these French people by putting the social question and that of the uniqueness of the territory of the Republic at the heart of the debate.
To read also Amine El Katmi: "
I refuse to
bow
down in the face of political Islam
"
You affirm that all the efforts of the public authorities in the districts will be in vain as long as these territories concentrate more than 50% of foreign families. How to fight against this concentration?
Given my origins and my background, I can allow myself a frankness on these subjects that others would not dare. I grew up in a district of Avignon, before becoming the elected representative. I heard words from Muslim families explaining to me that they had had enough, for lack of diversity, of having the impression of living as if they were "
in the bled".
". I had to manage schools in which 80% to 90% of children came from Arab-Muslim families. This mother explaining to Emmanuel Macron in Montpellier that her son imagined that the first name Pierre only existed in the books is far from being an isolated case. Moreover, as soon as families can afford it, they leave these neighborhoods and send their children to school elsewhere, particularly in private Catholic education, in order to confront them with co-education. Only those who live far from these cities idealize them while for nothing in the world they would not want their children to grow up there. If you add to the lack of cultural diversity, much higher levels of precariousness and insecurity in these neighborhoods than in the rest of the territory, you get an explosive cocktail.
I am clear-headed, we will not take Versailles families to live in Saint-Denis and vice versa, but if we do not conduct a new settlement policy to achieve greater diversity, our efforts will be in vain.
Amine El Khatmi
I therefore propose to cap social housing at 40% in each city and not to allocate social housing to foreigners in a district in which there would be 25% of foreigners. It is up to the lessors to offer them accommodation elsewhere. Urban renewal programs must systematically provide for 30% social housing, 30% subsidized housing and 30% free acquisition housing in the context of reconstructions. I am clear-headed, we will not take Versailles families to live in Saint-Denis and vice versa, but if we do not conduct a new settlement policy to achieve greater diversity, our efforts will be in vain.
On immigration, I take a firm and humane position. Firm, since I propose to raise by 30% the thresholds of resources for access to family reunification, the escort to the country of origin of rejected applicants and the establishment of the automaticity of expulsions of foreign offenders. Firmness must be matched by an effort to better integrate those who have a vocation to join our national community. Maintaining a flexible policy of quotas for foreign students outside the EU, increasing the resources mobilized by the State for language learning (200 hours in France compared to 600 hours in Germany) and bringing together naturalized volunteers having obtained nationality with a tutor serving as support in the first years go in this direction.
Read alsoRepublican Spring: "
We defend republican values against identities of all kinds
"
While we traditionally await you on questions of secularism or the fight against extremes, we discover that you devote a large part of your book to social questions ...
From the yellow vests crisis to confinement, we have seen what has been called “
the France of the back-office of the service company
” that is to say all these essential workers - for whom the work clothing is often a fluorescent chasuble - but the recognition of which falls short of social utility. What is happening in these trades of logistics, cleaning, guarding, catering or care? Two essential problems among others.
The first concerns working time. These workers are poorly paid, many below the low wage threshold (between 1,100 and 1,140 euros per month), because their working time is very often partial. In reality, they do not work part-time, but, between their first intervention in the morning and the last in the evening, they are paid part-time, with moments of under-presence in the middle of the day. Ultimately, they work for the same length of time as full-time people, but receive 15 to 20% less pay. The times of transport, breaks, dressing etc. are therefore essential, I propose to take them into account in the remuneration.
Each morning brings its new declaration of candidacy, often to the detriment of projects and ideas and we do not want to participate in this collapse of the public debate where the first comer imagines himself invested with a presidential destiny.
Amine El Khatmi
Another problem is hardship: these workers are presented as invisible, yet they are omnipresent in public, commercial or domestic spaces. In reality, what is invisible is the arduousness of their work, most of their tasks being relatively mundane: driving, delivering, depositing, carrying, rubbing ... What makes them difficult is the repetition of these gestures. but also the obligation of immediate availability of these workers. Hence, here again, the stake represented by the remuneration of transport times, for example. But beyond these questions which may seem technical, it is the political stake of the reappropriation of the question of work and its dignity that seems essential to me: placing this question at the heart of the presidential debate should be theone of the priorities of the candidates of the left.
To read also Laurent Bouvet: "
At the origins of the identity turning point
"
When the Republican Spring was created, the objective was to fight against the extreme right and Islamism, with secularism as a political horizon. However, in this book you take a position on subjects as diverse and technical as energy, culture, health or the institutions of the Fifth Republic. Does your movement have a vocation to become a heavy party in the presidential election, or even to present a candidate?
We have been involved in politics since the creation of the Republican Spring in 2016 by bringing ideas to the public debate. We will continue. What is new is that we assume that we want to have elected representatives, deputies in the next National Assembly. The role of critical commentator of the news has its interest but it instils in the long run a form of frustration of not being able to act. We want to act.
As for the presidential election, we first deal with the substance by putting forward these 77 proposals before addressing the question of the candidacy. Each morning brings its new declaration of candidacy, often to the detriment of projects and ideas and we do not want to participate in this collapse of the public debate where the first comer imagines himself invested with a presidential destiny. For our part, we proceed differently by first presenting a project. Either we find the spirit of this project in one of the applications that will be present at the end of November and we will support it. Otherwise, we will present our own candidate. We have the means, mayors come forward to support us. This option is open. But our priority is that our ideas are present in the debate,and tomorrow applied by those who will govern the country.
If the right-left divide remains relevant, it no longer structures the political life of our country as it has done for decades.
Amine El Khatmi
Do you still believe in the relevance of the traditional right-left divide? Or do you think the new dividing line now lies around secularism?
Millions of French people identify with the left, others with the right, there are socialists, communists, Gaullists, centrists, environmentalists, liberals, sovereignists. This cleavage has a reality, but it must be viewed in the light of another cleavage that has arisen in recent years between republicans and identitarians. The socialist militant that I was belonged to the same party as Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Benoît Hamon with whom my disagreements are now deep. Conversely, Guillaume Larrivé or David Lisnard, elected Les Républicains, formulate proposals that speak to me on a whole bunch of subjects. I greet thecommitment in favor of secularism by Macronist deputies such as François Cormier-Bouligeon or François Jolivet or universalist feminism by the socialist senator Laurence Rossignol. When the Communist Fabien Roussel describes the police as "security workers" and the ecologists Yannick Jadot and Delphine Batho come to demonstrate with them in front of the National Assembly, I see the position which should be that of a popular left. worthy of the name.
All this to tell you that if the right-left divide remains relevant, it no longer structures the political life of our country as it has done for decades.
Women and men of good will, sincere Republicans, find themselves in an arc that runs from left to right on the political spectrum.
No one will be right on their own.
There will be no savior.
Since April 21, 2002, all Presidents have been elected on a social basis larger than their electorate, but all have fallen back on their majority.
On the contrary, we must build a broad political alliance.
First because France must rebuild itself, then and above all because it must come together.
The time for solitary adventures is over.