Shoulda stuck to driving his truck into McDonald’s I reckon. Still, I guess three years in government is an advance on three months in prison.
From Monthly Review…
José Bové Declares Candidacy
Here is the text of José Bové’s declaration of candidacy for the presidential election, announced on Thursday, 1 February in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis).
France has never been so unequal.
A business leader earns 300 times more than a worker on the minimum wage. The richest shirk their tax obligation while 100,000 people are sleeping in the street. Stock options reward dismissals of employees to raise share prices.
It is time to put an end to a system which drags a great majority of workers down to precarious employment and social insecurity. It is time to declare an electoral insurrection against economic liberalism.
Tens of thousands of people nominated me to be a candidate in the presidential election. I decided to accept that my name will incarnate, on the ballot paper, the common will to demolish the right and the extreme right and to restore the hope of an alternative on the left. I decided to accept, so that the struggle of a convergence of all the forces of the feminist, anti-racist, and ecologist left of solidarity and social transformation will continue.
We do not resign ourselves to the current division of these forces. We want to be the face of unity among all men and women who want to really change life.
I am not a party candidate. I am not a political professional. My candidacy is that of a convergence of forces and citizens from social movements, trade unions, political currents, and associations of immigrants that aspire to the unity of this left. This candidacy is a collective candidacy supported by many voices.
Today, I call upon elected communist, ecologist, alternative, and anti-liberal socialist officials to allow us, thanks to their sponsorships, to take part in the official campaign…
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See also : France’s Presidential Race: Jose Bove Complicates the Contest, Doug Ireland, February 1, 2007
