April 2024
Opposition representatives have often written this kind of message on social networks.
Isce Bertrand Waucquez is extreme right-wing as the the opposition?
The answer is clearly NO!
Fact checking?
- When Rudy Aernoudt, professor at Ghent University and well-known liberal politician active in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia, asked Bertrand Waucquez – as co-chairman of the newly-founded People’s Party – in
March 2010
to take part in the federal elections on a list that would be active in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia (as a single list for the whole of Belgium), Bertrand agreed. Both Rudy Aernoudt’s pragmatic approach and the Belgian list corresponded perfectly to his mentality: a party present throughout Belgium, what a fine signal. - Bertrand is running on the Parti Populaire list in Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde for the June 2010 federal elections.
- In the end, Rudy Aernoudt was pushed aside by the other co-chairman (Mr. Modrikamen), who wanted to turn the Parti Populaire into the equivalent of the N-VA in Wallonia and Brussels.
- Bertrand Waucquez quickly distanced himself from the Popular Party. (which began to deviate completely from its initial objectives). A few months after joining the Popular Party, he returned his party card in 2010.
- 6 years later, CRISP labeled the PP as far-right, following a video published in 2016, (long after Bertrand Waucquez had left the party). CRISP’s Jean Faniel himself confirmed that the PP’s program cannot be described as extreme right-wing, but that it was following a speech in a video by Mr. Modrikamen in 2016 that the PP swung to the extreme right.
- For the record, Bertrand Waucquez was elected Chairman of the Management Committee of B-Plus in 2013, a pluralist movement advocating a modern, federal Belgium based on solidarity. https://bplus.be/fr. You can imagine that B-Plus wouldn’t have elected Bertrand Waucquez if they’d considered him to be far-right …
To claim that Bertrand Waucquez is extreme right-wing is therefore totally false and dishonest.
Some extracts from an article in La Libre Belgique dated 10/02/2016
ARTICLE LINK – https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/2016/02/10/modrikamen-pp-a-bascule-a-lextreme-droite-
… Never before had Manuel Abramowicz of Résistances.be (the far-right observatory) or Jean Faniel, director of Crisp (Centre de recherche et d’information sociopolitiques), described the formation chaired by Mischaël Modrikamen as a far-right party. … “If we look at the program and the executives, we can’t say that the PP is on the far right”, explains Mr. Abramowicz. But the lastnière vidéo publinked, on February 1, 2016, by Mischaël Modrikamen on the Peuple website (the party’s Internet propaganda arm) clearly suggests that the party president, once presented as a supporter of ultraliberalism and an alternative to the MR, has switched to the far right. … In the past, the PP had a discourse that was difficult to classify as extreme right-wing. A proponent of strong economic liberalism, a certain conservatism and a hard line on immigration and justice issues, it has now, through the voice of its president, and according to two knowledgeable observers of these issues, tilted towards classic far-right rhetoric. …