French people with mental disabilities or suffering from cognitive disorders challenge the presidential candidates and make 15 proposals. They are waiting for Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron to consider “the proposals they have made as citizens” and not simply as people in a vulnerable situation, explains on franceinfo Tanguy Chatel, sociologist, co-founder of the Cercle Vulnérabilité et Société think tank which led the #MaVoixCompte 2022 operation. For 9 months, a thousand people with disabilities mental have reflected and made proposals to be better integrated into democratic life. “They express concerns which turn out to be effectively of the same nature as those of all citizens”, he explains.
franceinfo: Do people with mental disabilities have the same concerns as all French people?
Tanguy Chatel: What is very surprising in this operation, which we had already begun during the great debate in 2019, then during the municipal elections in 2020, is that people in a situation of mental fragility (this covers disability, it covers illnesses, it also covers aging), expect only one thing, that is to be stimulated, encouraged, relieved. As soon as we help or stimulate them, they express concerns that turn out to be of the same nature as those of all citizens. Finally, it is an excellent thing that the law recognizes them the same right to vote as everyone else.
Among the proposals made, the presence of students on weekends in nursing homes. Is the intergenerational question important to them?
It comes up often. It’s strong because it means that they are not withdrawn into their world, but that they are still open to the world in which they live. And then, proposals around civic service which seems to them something very important.
“There are interests around young people and there are also interests on the question of health, since the Covid-19 has also mistreated them, on the question of freedom, since sometimes they have been confined to their establishment.”
Tanguy Chatel, sociologistat franceinfo
So there are questions that they experienced directly a few months ago and others that are questions of general policy and that’s what’s interesting, it was to bring them to subjects of interest general.
Is the whole political spectrum represented among people with mental disabilities?
Clearly, there have been some proposals on immigration. Some people felt that the policy was too lax and needed to be tougher. There were positions on security with an increased role and reinforced means for the police. There have been proposals on the cost of health. How to make sure not to reimburse everything or to reimburse perhaps the most virtuous people? We have a spectrum of proposals that can go a little further to the right. But we also have proposals that go to the left with more solidarity. So it covers the entire political spectrum.
What do they expect from Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron?
They say: the president or the future president must listen to people with disabilities. They ended their workshops saying: “We are waiting for proposals”! So it’s interesting, because they have made proposals. They expect in return that we speak to them, that we consider them and not simply that we consider their situation as people in a situation of mental fragility, but that we consider the proposals they have made as citizens .