Philippe Barrault (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
figureheading) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
wealthofnations2022-11-16 01:29 pm
figureheading) wrote in wealthofnations2022-11-16 01:29 pm
Entry tags:
fic: victorious.
Speaker: Philippe Antoine Barrault, PM
Date: November 1st, 1999
________________________________
Friends, normally I would address you in French from this seat.
It has been tradition throughout generations in our country to divide the administrations into their respective languages, but I feel, after the trepidation and doubt that has categorized the past month’s elections, it is finally the Luxembourgish people who has had a chance to speak, making it only appropriate that my response should be in the language we associate with our private lives as Luxembourgers. The life that remains our starting point and our ending point; a red thread I neither can nor wish to sever in my position as leader of the Conservative Democratic Party and now, Prime Minister of our country.
To this day, the CDP has not formed government for twenty years. And although you shall never hear from me the statement than any democratically sound election is a loss, I have seen Luxembourg led down paths I wish it had not gone, paths that this party fully plans on circumventing to any and all degrees possible. That is the promise by which we have campaigned during these elections, and we shall not betray them, now that the people have placed their trust in our ability to act on our word. In Rousseauian terms: we must, as legislators, not waste time saying what ought to be done, but do it. Simply that.
Because we carry a proud history on our shoulders, in this party. As an ideology, we have existed previous to Luxembourg gaining independency, and that history is what we will bring with us into the future. We face a time of change; a new century, but not only that, a new millennium, right around the corner. With it, new technology, new border divisions, new currencies, a new world, so to speak. We cannot predict what will come, but we can learn from the past, and remind ourselves that this country always has and always will be what it was, that which it remains. No socialist agenda will change our motto: mir wëllen bleiwe wat mir sinn.
Yes, the world will change. Our lives will change. But the starting point and the ending point remain fixed, here, in a Luxembourg that will stand tall in the tumultuous winds blowing through it.
The true victory we are celebrating tonight, my friends, is the victory of stability.
Date: November 1st, 1999
________________________________
Friends, normally I would address you in French from this seat.
It has been tradition throughout generations in our country to divide the administrations into their respective languages, but I feel, after the trepidation and doubt that has categorized the past month’s elections, it is finally the Luxembourgish people who has had a chance to speak, making it only appropriate that my response should be in the language we associate with our private lives as Luxembourgers. The life that remains our starting point and our ending point; a red thread I neither can nor wish to sever in my position as leader of the Conservative Democratic Party and now, Prime Minister of our country.
To this day, the CDP has not formed government for twenty years. And although you shall never hear from me the statement than any democratically sound election is a loss, I have seen Luxembourg led down paths I wish it had not gone, paths that this party fully plans on circumventing to any and all degrees possible. That is the promise by which we have campaigned during these elections, and we shall not betray them, now that the people have placed their trust in our ability to act on our word. In Rousseauian terms: we must, as legislators, not waste time saying what ought to be done, but do it. Simply that.
Because we carry a proud history on our shoulders, in this party. As an ideology, we have existed previous to Luxembourg gaining independency, and that history is what we will bring with us into the future. We face a time of change; a new century, but not only that, a new millennium, right around the corner. With it, new technology, new border divisions, new currencies, a new world, so to speak. We cannot predict what will come, but we can learn from the past, and remind ourselves that this country always has and always will be what it was, that which it remains. No socialist agenda will change our motto: mir wëllen bleiwe wat mir sinn.
Yes, the world will change. Our lives will change. But the starting point and the ending point remain fixed, here, in a Luxembourg that will stand tall in the tumultuous winds blowing through it.
The true victory we are celebrating tonight, my friends, is the victory of stability.