"Let them take the opportunity to attach Loire-Atlantique to Brittany!"

The ironic remark made by the president of the Brittany region: “Let them take the opportunity to attach Loire-Atlantique to Brittany!” reflects what I would call the strength of the power system. This system relies solely on the allegiance of our prominent elected officials who pretend. True democracy demands respect for the peoples and not for the large regions constructed to maintain the system. Our regional president has chosen his side a long time ago.

"Let them take the opportunity to attach Loire-Atlantique to Brittany!" It is with this ironic remark that Loïg Chesnais-Girard renewed his marked opposition in the newspaper Ouest-France to the legislative path taken to revive Alsace. He had found it "absurd" two days earlier, which will remain a major political blunder. How can he reproach the elected officials of Alsace for advancing for Alsace when historical Brittany remains stranded?

If we want to reunify Brittany, it is not with the refusal of the Pays de la Loire region that we will succeed. One does not ask a turkey if it agrees with Christmas, Patrick Mareschal said a few years ago. To revive Alsace and reunify Brittany, a special law is needed, expressing a strong political will to override the refusal of the concerned local authorities based on the famous article L 4122-1 of the general code of local authorities.

This is, by the way, the meaning of the Molac bill, which could not prosper.

It is less the political figure Chesnais-Girard that I wish to criticize here than the system we have been facing for so long that does not want reunification.

In 2015, we were not far from succeeding, but the system regained its footing, and the socialist deputies agreed at the expense of the Bretons in favor of the status quo. At the crucial moment, the Bretons could not win the battle for a simple reason: they did not dare to hold the Socialist Party accountable. One day, I will return to this in detail.

What I call the system is the Power system based on state thinking, which considers that the Breton people do not exist since it contradicts constitutional foundations. And if our people do not exist, on what basis could reunification be justified?

It was the socialists who got us into this mess in 2015. And it is again the socialists who blocked at the Loire-Atlantique Departmental Council the extraordinary petition of 105,000 launched by Bretagne réunie.

The large regions devoid of soul that Loïg Chesnais-Girard intends to protect and that he calls "territories" are merely expressions of Jacobin fears, administrative stupidity, and above all, the interests of the system. It is a bitter failure.

More than ever, we need to think about democracy in its humanistic dimension, which consists of respecting peoples and identity affiliations.

Loïg Chesnais-Girard is the pure product of this system. He inherited the administrative region of Brittany from Le Drian and feels at home there. Several months earlier, he had co-signed a statement from the regional presidents asserting that the time was no longer for redistricting!

Like many elected officials, Loïg Chesnais-Girard lives and thinks in terms of 4 departments, as indicated by the project for an IGP dedicated to Breton wine from the 4 departments of the administrative region. Loire-Atlantique holds little interest in his eyes.

Three years ago, Koun Breizh asked him for support to save the manor of the last secretary of the Duke of Brittany, in Bouvron, Loire-Atlantique. "I am not competent in Loire-Atlantique," he replied! The manor has been destroyed!

Let us ask ourselves why the Alsatians advance and not the Bretons? Our elected officials are not there. They are comfortably ensconced in the system. We could have conceived that the Molac bill would be submitted for a vote to authorize a consultation and finally reunify Brittany. Hundreds of thousands of people are eagerly waiting for it, on the other side of the wall... The bill remained stranded due to a lack of political support.

Since the impact study published discreetly in early 2024 by the Brittany region and the Loire-Atlantique department on the consequences of reunification, not much has happened.

However, we can still act. Politics is also the art of strong initiatives. A few years ago, the President of the Departmental Council, Patrick Mareschal, proposed to the Brittany region to organize a joint session of the two assemblies. Le Drian did not follow up at the time, citing the illegality of such a session. There is so much to initiate to reunify our old country...

How to make a democratic problem exist in the public space when the major elected officials remain silent? The associations that have been working for years sometimes feel a bit alone.

As long as our elected officials do not take to heart the defense of Brittany, nothing will advance regarding our languages, the unity of our old territory, and more broadly, our fundamental interests.

Loïg Chesnais-Girard embodies Breton renunciation. I had already denounced this in the "letter to those who have renounced Brittany." It is not with him that Brittany will emancipate. He wears a mask and pretends, thereby granting a Breton legitimacy to the centralizing system.

The centralizing system always needs the support of its victims and a decentralizing rhetoric to "make democracy." Centralism and decentralization are two sides of the same coin, so that nothing changes.

The term decentralization no longer means anything. And if nothing changes, tomorrow, it will be the term "autonomy" that will no longer mean anything, as it will have been co-opted and defused by the forces of the system.

To emancipate, one must be capable of shaking up the system and writing the two essential words: "Breton people." This is a prerequisite to proclaim tirelessly, for everything else depends on it. If a people is not a people, what is the point of its autonomy? What is the point of reunifying its territory or pretending that it expresses itself in a true language? We desperately seek these two words in the report on autonomy submitted to Prime Minister Borde. He has not received the slightest response. The Corsicans do not have this fear, and they are advancing.

And yet the system is sick, at the end of its rope. It relies solely on debt. For us to regain our rights, it would suffice for our elected officials to stop being its foremost defenders, most often, alas, out of personal interest.

Normandy is reunified. Alsace is raising its head. The Basques and Corsicans are in the process of saving their language. And the Bretons remain on the platform.

They have especially lost eight years. Are we going to embark on a new mandate? Of course, he will promise many things, starting with autonomy. But who will believe him again, and above all, for what purpose?

Yvon Ollivier

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