2023-04-16 05:30:07
Former leader of the French Communist Party (PCF), Marie-George Buffet retired from political life in 2022, after forty-six years in office, during which she was notably Member of Parliament for Seine-Saint-Denis (1997-2022 ) and sports minister in Lionel Jospin’s government (1997-2002), at the initiative of the anti-doping law.
At 73, the former 2007 presidential candidate has just been appointed co-president, alongside athlete Stéphane Diagana, of the new National Committee for Ethics and Democratic Life in Sport.
I wouldn’t have come here if…
Yes, one day in May 1968, I hadn’t crossed my arms in philosophy class. I was in the final year at the Joachim-du-Bellay girls’ high school in Angers, and with three girlfriends, we put the establishment on strike. Since that day, the word “commitment” has been the most important to me.
What motivated this high school student gesture?
The boys from the technical school next door came shouting in front of our gates to incite us to strike. It was an opportunity to express my anger against social injustice. My mother had difficulty making ends meet. We were seven children. I was the middle girl, between three brothers and three sisters. Our childhood got off to a good start: my father was a cabinetmaker, he made wooden dashboards for Citroën’s luxury cars.
When these dashboards disappeared, he became a garage mechanic. He had set up his garage in Antony [Hauts-de-Seine], on the national 20, but it went bankrupt. He spent six months in Fresnes for having badly kept his accounts. I think it was this time in prison that made him never come home. My father’s departure was an event, but we “swallowed it up”. We grew up in his closed garage, which had become like our playground. Our small apartment was above.
How did your mother cope?
She raised her children alone without working. I know what water and electricity cuts are. I know what it is, a mother who wants to be reassuring: “Don’t worry, it’s the neighborhood that’s cut off. We always ate our fill thanks to the flours that she made with resourcefulness. But I will never forget the day when my mother walked back from the hospital: she had had all her teeth removed, which were ruined, she still had threads hanging… I said to myself: “Shit! My mother ! This is perhaps what founded my commitment. Teething, even today, is a sign of poverty.
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