“Some deputies only address their followers” | EUROtoday

The waiter, whom he has identified since 2002, bows to him when he asks for an orange juice. The basic finances rapporteur, Charles de Courson, who reads The Chained Duck on the subsequent desk, offers him “Mr. President” – the elected communist chairs the Democratic and Republican Left (GDR) group. Overseas elected officers from his group have simply come to ask him about an modification. Between two jokes, Chassaigne, who’s 74 years previous, factors out to them that he’s much less revolutionary than earlier than. “Oh no! In our country, we have a proverb for that, a Guyanese elected official retorts point-for-tat: “The tiger can age but its claws remain sharp.” »

Age, the truth is, reasonably strengthens his authority. Few MPs can talk, like him, immediately by SMS with the Prime Minister. He speaks to nearly everybody on acquainted phrases and maintains good relations with Gabriel Attal. And when he disagrees, he respectfully lets it’s identified. Thus, through the QAG on Tuesday, he was disenchanted by the feedback of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, on the battle in Gaza, and made this identified to him dwell. In barely 5 minutes, the minister responded. “I am not into verbal violence, not into radicalism,” he notes. This maybe explains why I’m listened to and revered. » We hearken to him, too, not daring to interrupt him when he tells his anecdotes which assist to higher perceive how the Assembly may change so shortly.

“Why are you a communist? »

André Chassaigne readily admits that he was never as fulfilled, in his parliamentary work, as when a right-wing man, Jean-Louis Debré, presided over the institution, from 2002 to 2007. “I never did adopt so many amendments! » he laughs. But it was a different time. Opposition MPs were respected and there was more cross-partisan work. Nothing like it, says Chassaigne, when François Hollande was in power, with his solid absolute majority of socialist deputies. He then had the feeling of being less considered. But he absolutely does not hold it against the former president. Last July, when he missed, by 13 votes, being elected president of the Assembly, he made Hollande and a few others laugh by asserting that he would have been elected king of the palace if the all the agents of the Palais-Bourbon were made to vote, and not just the deputies.

He also recounts with relish a significant episode with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. One day, he received him in his office and said, in substance: “Mr. Chassaigne, I need to understand something. Why are you a communist? » Chassaigne, who imitates Giscard very well, then tells him about his childhood in the Clermont area. His father was a worker at the Michelin factory and read Humanity Sunday. At only 16 years old, “Dédé” grew to become concerned in communist youth. He then grew to become a trainer after which a school principal. At the tip of the alternate, nevertheless, VGE stays uncertain. He will proceed to be stunned, throughout municipal council conferences in Chamalières (Puy-de-Dôme) – the place he was mayor for seven years – that “a man as intelligent as Chassaigne could be a communist”.