“Debate with the extreme right yes, but we will certainly not negotiate with this party”, begins Raoul Hedebouw. “At the PTB, we are obviously for a political sanitary cordon, but the question of a media sanitary cordon arises differently in the north and in the south of the country. However, I am the president of a national party. So, inevitably, if the he agreement included a media cordon against the far right on the French-speaking side, there is no doubt, we sign it. We are anti-fascist activists at our hearts, “he explains.
The strong man of the far left party then regrets that no initiative has been taken to associate the Flemish parties with this media sanitary cordon. “In Flanders, there is no media cord (…) We should therefore have a global agreement at the level of all the national parties.”
Raoul Hedebouw then wants to denounce the fact that the French-speaking parties have not contacted the Flemish parties for the cordon sanitaire. “It’s a bit regrettable, but it’s a tradition in Belgium, it’s that the democratic parties (PS, MR, Ecolo, Défi and Les Engagés) who fought for this cordon did not contact their Flemish counterparts, because they are debating with the far right.”
At the microphone of DH Radio, Raoul Hedebouw therefore believes that the debate must continue against the far right to contribute to anti-fascism. “If in Flanders you want efficiency, you have to have that debate. And so for the PTB, in Flanders, that would mean self-exclusion from all TV shows and I don’t think that’s going to contribute much there. to anti-fascism because we are an alternative precisely to the far right.”
“We are a party that fights even more for democratic rights than the MR”
The MR, which wanted to include the PTB in the sanitary cordon, considers that this party is “as dangerous as the extreme right” because “it has communist ideas that are harmful to democracy”, according to the liberals. Words that Raoul Hedebouw does not want to hear. “I find the exit of Georges-Louis Bouchez very serious. His goal is to discredit a political opponent to his liberal policy, to his policy of the richest since he has no arguments.”
Raoul Hedebouw therefore sees the recent outings of the MR as attempts at destabilization. “Bouchez sees that the PTB is rising more and more and what he wants is to ban us from actions in the media. We therefore see an MR who is totally in panic with completely fallacious arguments”, launches he.
The guest of the day even believes that his party is more democratic than the MR. “In the PTB, we are a party that fights for democratic rights even more than the MR. The MR is a party for the rich and its members do not like to see the PTB being busy rising. I repeat it but in French-speaking Belgium, there is no tradition of a sanitary cordon around the Marxist forces. I remind you all the same that the MR party formed a government with the Communist Party at the end of the Second World War. So what does the MR wanting to exclude the PTB from the sanitary cordon, it’s really American McCarthyism.”
Raoul Hedebouw, however, wishes to salute the other democratic parties which did not want to include the far left party in the cordon sanitaire. “The left parties, we expected it, because we are fighting together. And for Les Engagés and Défi, it’s a red line that they didn’t want to cross”, concludes Raoul Hedebouw.