An agreement was reached Thursday afternoon between five French-speaking parties – PS, MR, Ecolo, Les Engagés and DéFI – on the update of the Charter of Democracy, we learned from a good source, confirming information from the Evening. No official communication is expected on Thursday. The staffs of the parties are working on a joint press release which should be published on Saturday, the eve of May 8 and the twenty years of the signing of the previous version of the charter.
According to Le Soir, the updated text weaves a sanitary cordon excluding any political agreement and any debate in the media with the far right. The MR also wanted to target the extreme left, but the Charter would not provide for this. The PTB will not sign the text. The Communists fully subscribe to the idea of a media and political cordon sanitaire on the French-speaking side but, as a national party, they believe that they cannot reject the media debate with the extreme right in Flanders because the latter there is already speech.
“As a national party, the problem is simple for us: either there is a debate with the other parties and the Vlaams Belang, or a debate with the other parties, the Vlaams Belang and the PTB. And, for anti-fascism , option 2 seems to me the best”, repeated Thursday the president, Raoul Hedebouw, who regrets that no initiative has been taken to associate the Flemish parties.
Around the table, some, in particular the MR, would have liked to specify that no political agreement could be concluded with another French-speaking party which would not have signed the Charter, thus targeting the PTB. DéFI also would not have been against including the PTB in the political sanitary cordon. But the formula was rejected, it was indicated by concordant sources. This does not however prevent each party, taken individually, from refusing an agreement for this reason, specified one of these sources.