French citizens in Australia can vote for Cheminade, candidate for ‘detente, understanding and cooperation’

Jacques Cheminade, president of the Solidarity and Progress Party, a long-time leader in the international Schiller Institute, and friend of the Australian Citizens Party, is running for the French National Assembly in the 11th District of French Citizens Abroad, which includes Australia, along with China, Russia and 46 other countries of Eastern Europe, Asia, and Oceania. President Emmanuel Macron last month called the snap elections for 30 June (first round) and 7 July, in the wake of heavy losses suffered by his party in the European Union Parliament elections.

Cheminade’s declaration of candidacy, titled “‘Detente, Understanding and Cooperation’—from the Atlantic to the China Sea”, follows.

Let me go straight to the point. If I am running for your constituency, it is because it represents a decisive stake for world peace and for our country. It stretches from the far north to Australia, via China, which is a good thing, because it’s on this scale that we have to rise to the challenge.

We live under the immediate threat of war. By striking the Russian early warning missile defence systems at Armavir and Orsk, NATO crossed a red line. In organising D-Day in Normandy on 6 June, Emmanuel Macron welcomed Volodymyr Zelensky and excluded Russian representatives, which is not in the interests of the Russian or Ukrainian people, but in the interests of all those who fish in troubled waters and who are playing poker with our lives. This is a senseless provocation at a time when France should be mediating and inspiring a policy of peace to regain its lost grandeur and influence.

In his time, Charles de Gaulle fought for a policy of “détente, understanding and cooperation”. It is more necessary than ever to prevent “humanity from annihilating itself in monstrous destruction”. Unfortunately, I can see no other candidate who is equal to the task. Voting for my idea of France means sending a decisive “political” missile to help our country pull itself together. We are talking about a new Liberation of our country, for it is occupied by a financial and cultural oligarchy that is destroying it.

Today, I am fighting first and foremost for a foreign policy that no longer depends on those who have seized power in Washington, but, in the name of our national sovereignty, works in harmony with the countries of the Global South and the BRICS-Plus, which intend to ensure that their own sovereignty is respected. I support their initiatives, particularly China’s, for a win-win international system. It’s not a question of rallying to anyone, but of getting along with the forces rising up in the world. I will be fighting for a liberated France to be present in Kazan [at the BRICS summit] on 22-24 October, without Emmanuel Macron, of course.

It is a question of participating in a new architecture of mutual security and development in the world, to the advantage of each country and in the image of the principles of the Treaty of Westphalia. Leaving no one by the wayside, neither large nor “small” countries, as I said [during my Presidential candidacy] back in 1995, from the Atlantic to the China Sea. President Xi Jinping’s three Initiatives are a good place to start. India, a member of the BRICS with almost 20 per cent of the world’s population, is an essential element of this Global South. Vietnam is dear to our hearts. Australia must become an essential pivot.

In Ukraine, as in the Middle East, I call for an end to the fighting through negotiation and reconstruction. France must no longer supply arms to Ukraine, nor interfere in its territory. I find it criminal of NATO to hand Ukrainians over to death in a proxy war that will inevitably be lost. I condemn NATO’s continued extension towards Russia’s borders, which led to President Putin’s intervention. Our task is not to justify it, but to understand it. Our President has become a warmonger, [centre-left coalition leader] Raphaël Glucksmann has always been a warmonger, and [president of the National Rally] Jordan Bardella has joined NATO. I favour the peace plan that Presidents Lula and Xi Jinping [of Brazil and China] have just presented. So, I am in favour of dissolving NATO, which has become the armed wing of the City of London, Wall Street and the Anglo-American services. I have nothing against the United States as a nation, but everything against the military-financial forces that occupy it. I am in favour of an alliance between the workers and citizens of the North and the peoples of the Global South. With the Schiller Institute, an international organisation of which I am an active member, I am making every effort to achieve this.

To carry out this policy, I will re-establish a Ministry of Foreign Affairs worthy of the name, and support our network of Institutes and Alliances françaises, as well as our corporate expatriates—in other words, all those involved in the new international development architecture. It’s time to put in place the human and financial resources that our policy must have.

Liberated from the forces that oppress us, we will then be able to re-establish a just social order in our country, and a policy of rebirth of public services: hospitals, schools, nurseries, laboratories, and an industrial policy that respects the production and value chains that carry our economy within our borders and beyond.

As a patriot and citizen of the world, I will be the sword—or laser, as we would say today—putting pressure on those who no longer believe in our sovereignty. The French are a strong people, but they don’t know it. I intend to play a part in our awakening, thanks to you who, aware of our potential influence in the world, intend to contribute to it. Help me to help a France where we will no longer have reason to be pessimistic, because we will be thinking with the eyes of the future.

Letter from Jacques Cheminade to French voters in Australia

Dear fellow citizens and friends in Australia,

At a time when war is threatening the world, when all nations are rearming and a financial crisis is looming, I am fighting for peace through mutual economic development. Without naivety or ulterior motives, with a mobilising project. By voting for me, you will help France to hold its own.

I am fighting for a just and lasting peace throughout the Asia-Pacific region, within a new international architecture of mutual security and development. Only in this way can the wounds caused by AUKUS be healed, avoiding an arms race, with a true partnership for development. Australia must not be drawn into a NATO projection into Oceania and Asia that would destroy economic relations throughout the region. By voting for me, you will be voting for friendship between our peoples. And together, we will take part in the BRICS awakening.

You live in a pioneering and friendly country. Coming from you, from our antipodes, votes for me will be a shock in France. They will give a warning to our “elites” and to those who have sunk into the system of parties and egos, that a shift towards the South is taking place. Those people are short-sighted. However, it is only through an international policy aimed at breaking the lock-grip of financial austerity, that it will be possible to increase purchasing power and combat inflation, to ensure security and put an end to violence, and to genuinely combat poverty and inequality.

The other parties are all in favour of continuing to deliver arms to Ukraine, while proposing to fleece that country without compensation. What they are proposing has no foundation. I am fighting, on the contrary, to build a foundation.