Special series “Party Leaders” on Jeudi en Prime. This Thursday the 23rd, it was the liberals' turn to answer questions from François De Brigode and Nathalie Maleux on RTBF.
Security & justice
During these 25 minutes, Georges-Louis Bouchez discussed the country's security situation and judicial leniency. “When the police arrest an offender, he must be convicted and stay in prison!” he said.
“Yes, we need more police officers on the streets! Today I hear the left, which has suddenly discovered insecurity and fast-track trials. But numbers alone aren't enough. The core of the problem is: some offenders have to appear before a judge 5 or 6 times before ever being convicted; sentences are lighter in Belgium than elsewhere; police officers can't keep up because they're overloaded with administrative work.
Police officers will have less work the day the people they arrest, who are meant to go to prison, actually serve their sentences.
Also, 43% of our inmates are non-Belgian, and most of them are here illegally. That's double the average of Council of Europe countries. Let's send foreign inmates back to their countries and ban them from returning to Belgium. I'm very open to immigration, but someone who comes to this country to commit offences has no place in Belgium. He must leave and never come back.”
Employment at the heart of it
“We don't want to fight against people who haven't worked for years; on the contrary, we want to support them back into work, because it's above all in their own interest to regain independence, hope and motivation.
A social worker sometimes earns less in purchasing power than the benefit recipient sitting across from them. A very concrete example that happened to me this morning: Sarah, whom I met in Marcinelle, a mother of two, told me that with all the social benefits she receives, she has no interest in working. And she added that she would nonetheless like to work, and is indeed following a training course. But once she has a job, she'll have less in her pocket than staying on CPAS support. What are you supposed to say to her? It's not that she doesn't want to work. It's the current system that's stopping her. At the MR, we propose limiting the combination of social benefits.”