Brussels MP Fouad Ahidar quits Vooruit: “Party is more concerned with its image than with its values” | Domestic

There has been a dispute between 50-year-old Ahidar and the party leadership for some time now. Ahidar was expelled from the party office last year by then chairman Connor Rousseau after he voted against the ban on slaughter without stunning in Brussels. The party also recently distanced itself from some controversial statements by Ahidar about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

LOOK. Fuss surrounding controversial statements by Fouad Ahidar

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The Brussels MP now keeps the honor to himself and leaves the party. In his statement he lashes out at the party leadership and at the direction of the party that no longer corresponds to its fundamental values ​​of solidarity, justice, equality and freedom. “Precisely because these values ​​are the essence of my political commitment, I want to continue to defend them by taking a different path,” said Ahidar.

He refers, among other things, to the policy of “locking up children” and the hardening of views on migration. “I am deeply appalled by the many blunders, the condemnations of racism and sexism, and by the deplorable way in which the party is run. The party is more concerned with its image than its values,” Ahidar writes.

The racism incident surrounding former party chairman Conner Rousseau should have caused a “major ethical uproar”, but according to Ahidar that happened too little.

According to him, the fact that Rousseau was still almost unanimously supported within the party office is a sign that “credibility was compromised”. According to Ahidar, Rousseau’s dismissal came too late and left its mark. He calls it “an indelible stain on political integrity and proof of the moral decay at the top.”

Ahidar – who has been politically active for about 25 years, first at ID21, VlaamsProgressieves and SLP and later at sp.a/Vooruit – accuses Vooruit of an unacceptable concentration of power at the top. For Ahidar himself, it is also the end of a process that was initiated when he was excluded from the party office last year. “The events led me to reconsider my place within the party and to take a clear position on the next elections,” he wrote. “I am withdrawing from the party. Not out of spite, but out of disappointment.”

Ahidar informed BRUZZ that he will continue to sit in the Brussels parliament. “I continue to work, also in collaboration with the members of One.Brussels-Vooruit in the Brussels parliament. I don’t even know if that is necessary as an independent, because Vooruit never existed in the Brussels parliament, it is One.Brussels. But we’ll see. This is a break with Vooruit national,” said Ahidar.

Vooruit does not want to respond to Ahidar’s decision.