Pol-employment (3/4)-For the elected PS of Hautes-Alpes, happiness is in the meadow and in the assembly. We followed her on his farm, in Gap.
On June 19, at the fresh, the truck dashboard indicates 5:30 a.m., but Marie-José German has a smile to the ears. Brebis breeder for thirty-five years, this year she can lead her 500 animals “on vacation”, at 2,000 meters above sea level. Her husband and son stayed on the farm to make hay. An hour to load, then it’s the exit from Gap, several hours on the road and 8 kilometers on foot to touch the goal, at midday. Transhumance, this total happiness that she did not know last year, busy beating the campaign … Legislative. Elected socialist deputy of the first district of Hautes-Alpes on July 7, 2024, the breeder now divides her time between her mandate, “the culmination of a political commitment to the service of others”, and her exploitation.
In the courtyard of the farm under construction, she recounts her weekly journey. “By Paris, it’s fifteen round trips!” I often take the night train, but it is not a priority when it arrives in Paris, so it is often late for several hours … “In the cabin, she takes the opportunity to finish the main task of breeder she has kept: the paperwork. A half day per week, she blackens ever more papers, when you know that it is necessary, in the area where it lives, fulfill a new contract with the butcher when the price changes. Either every week!
“I brought the compensation on time, it’s 12 euros”
“But when I am in the assembly, I only do parliamentary work, I cannot do something else there,” lights up Marie-José German. There is the hemicycle, but especially work in committee. The deputy did not choose that taking care of agriculture, even if she gives her opinion in a PS group meeting, as recently on the Duplo law, which does not “simplify anything”, according to her, especially in the sector where she lives, or soon on the new PAC. It is to the Law Commission that it sits, discovering the arduous part of parliamentary activity. “In the hemicycle, work stops at midnight, but in committee, sometimes, at 3 o’clock we are still there. So the one who believed in an error the first time that she received the deputy compensation – 5,900 euros net monthly – did the calculation. “We start at 8 am and go to bed at midnight for three days. In constituency, it is between 8:30 a.m. and 7 p.m., there are not many Sundays either, because I do as much as possible. I brought the compensation on time, that is 12 euros. She and her husband each received 1,300 euros monthly, as breeders. The couple has invested a lot in the modernization of the exploitation, to transmit it more serenely to their son, in a few years.
To keep the hand, the 50 -year -old will feed animals from time to time. A balance not simple but which delights it. “When you help people in their daily lives, it’s great satisfaction. In Paris, I fought about medical deserts, with Guillaume Garot [député PS et auteur d’une proposition de loi]on the counting of doctors. So that in addition to the 140,000 inhabitants are also encrypted as likely to be treated the 40 % additional population who stay each year in the Hautes-Alpes … Here, you put six months to have an appointment with the dentist. »»
So, if a dissolution occurs in the coming months, it will be a candidate. Because being a deputy is not limited to overplayed slaps from the Palais-Bourbon. “The discussions are sometimes above ground and the spectacle scandalous. But it is also an thankless function, where you can help. We don’t explain it enough. I intervene a lot in schools, to say that it is not in the hemicycle that it happens … “
