Alongside Clarisse Agbegnenou, Pierre Gasly, Tony Parker, Estelle Mossely or even Laure Manaudou, Michaël Jeremiasz signed a platform on Tuesday April 12, calling for blocking the far right during the second round of the 2022 presidential election. Interview with the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games flag bearer.
Franceinfo:sport: What is the genesis of this forum?
Michael Jeremiasz: The platform was born from exchanges with several athletes on the basis of common convictions in the face of the urgency of the situation. The issue of the commitment of athletes is the same as for any citizen. Today is not a call to vote for a person but to vote against the National Rally. It is a commitment of opposition, of fear too. Our ethnic and cultural origins should not be a determining factor in anything. It’s not the France in which I want to live, not the values that I carry, that I want to pass on to my child. The idea is to unite men and women around universal values of brotherhood and tolerance, for a fairer and less discriminating society. Nor is it unconditional support for the outgoing president.
Among the signatories, there are many retired athletes or big names in French sport, already very established in society. Was there any reluctance among athletes to make a public commitment?
For anyone who takes a position publicly, this is not without consequences. Today, you have one person out of two who is ready to vote for the National Rally. To position oneself, for one or the other, is necessarily divisive. We know how it could have happened in the past for an athlete to get involved in politics. But the proportion of athletes who commit, not for a party or for a candidate, but in general, is less important today than in the past. The younger generation must also engage. It is not supporting a candidate, as we saw at the time with Faudel and Nicolas Sarkozy or Yannick Noah and Ségolène Royal. It’s a dam. It is a collective mobilization, citizen, to what for us, has no place at the head of the country.
“Sport is education and essential values for all.”
Michaël Jeremiasz, flag bearer for France at the Paralympic Games in Rio in 2016at franceinfo: sport
5 years ago, a forum signed by 60 athletes already called for blocking the far right. What differences are there today?
What has changed is that in five years the Rassemblement National is even closer to gaining power. It is then up to everyone to make sure that it is not just a dam and that the bellows falls overnight. After very humbly, with a platform like that, there is not a sportsman who believes that our little notoriety will change the world and cause hundreds of thousands of people to change their vote. It is at least the expression of a feeling, and people do what they want with it. It will please some, displease others. Never mind. The important thing is to defend common convictions, the values of sport.
Beyond a barrage on the far right, was there an urgency for the sports movement to bring out a voice in this presidential election?
This platform reminds Emmanuel Macron that, in two years, we will organize the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, with all that this entails as a vector of change in a society: a reduction in inequalities, the consideration of public health issues , the ability to create social ties, etc. It shouldn’t just be an epiphenomenon or something to be approached cosmetically. We want to believe in a society in which everyone can live on good terms, but we will have to step up our game and do a lot more. Not for very high level sport but more for sport at school, federations, clubs, structures, associations. These are great tools that are underused in our country. It’s a way of talking about sport, if only once, in the countryside. It’s a subject for society as a whole, not something reserved for people jogging on Sunday mornings.