François De Smet, the president of French-speaking centrist party DéFI, made clear his opposition to entering an electoral coalition with Les Engagés in the run-up to 2024.
Speaking on LN24 news channel, De Smet stated that though the parties might have similar economic programmes, they are very different in other respects.
On Monday evening, De Smet was asked by LN24 about the feasibility of entering into a coalition with Les Engagés ahead of the 2024 elections. Both parties are towards the political centre in Wallonia and in Brussels. However, they have failed to convert this into polling success, as indicated in the most recent survey conducted by Ipsos in November.
The poll puts DéFI at 10.4% in Brussels and 5.3% in Wallonia, with Les Engagés courting 6,1% of the capital's voters and 9.1% in Wallonia. Were the Ipsos survey to be accurate in the 2024 election, DéFI would get only two MPs; Les Engagés can expect five.
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This had led many to question whether a pre-electoral coalition might be a shrewd move with benefits for both parties. But DéFI's leader De Smet wasn't overly enthusiastic on this front, rejecting the proposal for now and claiming that besides "building a purely socio-economic centrist movement", the vision in other policy areas is unclear.
"It's not enough to simply say: 'We're going to be better than the liberals on freedoms, better than the socialists on solidarity and better than the ecologists on ecology'," De Smet concluded.
