“We express our attachment to pluralism and to a regional assembly representative of the vote”

2023-05-29 15:00:09

La France is a democratic republic. Through its Constitution, its social and political history, the people wanted France to embrace the Republic and the individual and collective freedoms it offers, protects and promotes. It guarantees the pluralistic expressions of opinions and the equitable participation of political parties and groups in the democratic life of the nation.

By consecrating a decentralized Republic, the Constitution also recognized the local democratic fact. Through the election of 500,000 local elected officials who bring the institutions to life, citizens regularly reaffirm their desire to form a community despite a democratic decline perceptible. They also attach great importance to having their ideas and aspirations represented and proposed in public debate.

The pluralism of ideas and the diversity of political forces structure our Republic. These have shaped our recent history, punctuated by contradictory and memorial political debates, but also by national harmony in times of joy, war and mourning.

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For more than a century, the French Communist Party (PCF) has participated in the democratic life of our country. In 1944, the passage of the Communist Amendment Fernand Grenier (1901-1992) opened the right to vote to women. Two years later, thirty-three deputies were elected, including seventeen Communists, ten Gaullists and six Socialists.

Democratic decline

The PCF, alongside all the forces from the Resistance, was among those who built the National Council of the Resistance (CNR), took part in the provisional government and remains today a party of government, represented in the two Chambers. In 2023, it manages more than seven hundred municipalities in France, including thirty-four in Ile-de-France.

Its representation by a group of elected members within the Ile-de-France regional council is, however, now being called into question. The arbitrary increase in the number of elected representatives necessary for the constitution of a political group in the Ile-de-France region would result in the pure and simple disappearance of the voice of the Communists in the Hemicycle, but also of the possibilities of expression of all the political families wishing to form a group.

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If adopted on May 31, this evolution during term of office would be, for our part, contrary to the will of the voters and unacceptable. It would contribute directly and indirectly to democratic decline, with a growing part of the population no longer feeling represented in decision-making places.

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