French-Tunisian businessman Mohammed Ayachi Ajroudi, who is also a presidential candidate in the upcoming French elections, gave a speech yesterday to the French people, calling for making equality a priority for the next five years and strengthening educational pathways to success at major schools.
Here is the full text of Ajroudi’s speech:
Everyone for the sake of France
France represents all French people
Immigrants and children of immigrants and all French descendants of immigrants
We have to wake up and break our silence and decide together who will be the next president in March 2022 - without being, at every election date, hostages to the identity that national leaders play on
Our number exceeds millions, citizens who do not bear the names of our Gothic ancestors, but we love France as much as we love our mothers.
France is a nation. It is our homeland for which our fathers sacrificed their blood, whether in 1914 or 1945, in rejection of barbarism.
For thousands of years, France and the Mediterranean have shared a historical heritage, a heritage that binds us together.
The France that we adore is the one that elevates the nation above anything else whatsoever, be it belief or philosophy, that rejects all forms of isolation.
It is the France that our fathers built with their own hands. For that, we should not degrade ourselves in search of work, to the point of forging our names to appear French and stripping the history of any of us to hide our roots.
France, where Islam ranks second, with more than 12 million citizens, according to some, has become an outlet for the most extremist ideas
The accusation of terrorism and responsibility for barbarism extends to everyone.
Unfortunately, these crimes were committed by barbarians hiding under the identity of extremist political Islam.
In France, the millions of Muslim citizens, take part in the construction of national identity, just like any other French citizen, regardless of ideological orientation.
The France we want is a country of equality and we want to live in peace and we strive to have its children educated in the best schools so that they can develop their talents.
It is the France where some candidates are trying to manipulate its millennia-old history. We will work in the country, relying on our rights from our 1958 constitution and the principles of secularism, freedom, equality and fraternity.
France is a unitary, indivisible, secular, democratic and social republic.
It guarantees equality between all citizens without distinction of origin, race, color or religion and also respects all beliefs.
France is our homeland as it is our destiny, and because we live in a republic, we have the right to vote.
We must vote to enforce our rights whether we are believers or atheists. We will choose who will answer our statement covering the following points:
- Making equality a priority for the next five years.
- Dismantling ghettos by promoting integration.
- Strengthening educational pathways to success in major schools.
- Re-launching the Higher Council for Integration, headed by the President of the State Council, to put an end to identity-based discourse.
- Appointing French imams to deliver their sermons in French and respect the values of the Republic.
- Reactivating the Union for the Mediterranean as one of the pillars of European policy for France.
- Launching a new policy related to the Mediterranean region, establishing ambitious partnerships with Africa
- Supporting the historical orientation of our economy and our strategy through exchanges that respect common interests and not through the proliferation of weapons, to assume the role of the main interlocutor in the world.
