The Zesummen-d’Bréck list is a combination of two movements: the d’Bréck association, founded in 2018, and the Zesummen political party, founded in January 2024 by David Foka. Both movements have made inclusion and diversity, particularly from a national perspective, their main priorities. In addition to party president Foka (60, teacher), the list includes Elfida Aguilar (65, accountant); Alexandre Chateau-Ducos (55, auctioneer); Danielle Choucroun (58, doctor, former candidate for the Pirates); Athanase Popov (43, European civil servant); and Domingas Tavares (46, shopkeeper). The list was drawn up under the banner of “the equality and diversity I dream of for Luxembourg.” Geographically speaking, the candidates are variously from Africa (Foka), Latin America (Aguilar), Cape Verde (Tavares), Eastern Europe (Popov) and Western Europe (Choucroun and Chateau-Ducos). The Zesummen-d’Bréck list is the only one with two non-Luxembourgers and all its members of foreign origin.

A German citizen of Cameroonian origin who became a Luxembourger, Foka is no novice in politics. After working for Oskar Lafontaine of the German social democratic party (SPD)--“my mentor,” says Foka--he joined the LSAP after moving to Luxembourg. It was a frustrating experience, he says, citing the fact that he was never put forward by the party. Within the LSAP, he founded “Spic”--Socialism for Integration and Sovereignty--a programme to help integrate foreigners into the LSAP. He did manage to secure a place on the party list for the 2011 municipal elections in Luxembourg City, but his 2,949 votes were not enough to join the party’s governing bodies, nor even to stand as a candidate again in the following elections.

To pursue his objective of better integrating foreigners, he then left the party for the volunteer and social sector. That’s when (déi Gréng) recruited him for the Greens, which also proved to be, says, Foka, a frustrating experience. Despite being on the steering committee for gender equality issues, Foka was dropped from the party’s list for the municipal elections in Luxembourg City. Wounded, he decided to give up politics to return to the volunteer sector, where his mission remained campaigning for the better integration of people of foreign origin, whether Luxembourgers or not.

He then became involved with the National Council of Foreigners (Conseil national des étrangers or CNE), with the vision “to turn the CNE into a second Chamber of Deputies for foreigners.” But the creation of the Higher Council for Living Together Interculturally (Conseil supérieur du vivre-ensemble interculturel), which replaced the CNE as of 31 December 2023, forced him to change his battleground.

So he launched Zesummen, not as an association but as a political party. “Associations don’t get listened to,” he says. And his programme? “We are a political movement for diversity and good governance that wants to make the voice of the people and civil society heard. We want to unite all the components of society to create the nation of Luxembourg. We want to bring people together and restore hope and a sense of citizenship to all those who have turned their backs on politics.” These asseverations come partly in a language context: they have no command of Luxembourgish, the language of political life and one that, according to Foka, excludes many first-generation citizens who are not comfortable debating in that language. Meanwhile, the lingua franca of Zesummen is French. “It’s a language that unites us, a language that everyone in Luxembourg understands.”

Zesummen is not fighting alone. Other players have made the promotion of diversity the heart of their campaign and their programme. Volt is among these, a party that Foka also approached but who were not convinced by his idea to run together.

He found support in d’Bréck, an association set up in 2018 following the CNE and aiming to reform it. At the time, says its president--Athanase Popov, also on the Zesummen-d’Bréck list--the CNE was finding it difficult to make its voice heard. “In 2018, the aim was to create a political movement likely to interest non-Luxembourgers in Luxembourg politics by emphasising the cultural component,” says Popov. “I believe that culture and politics are linked and that some of the country’s political problems stem from the way in which national culture is acquired. The current vision is purely national, resulting in the ethnic minority population in all the country’s towns dominating the electoral debate through language--this is not appropriate for the grand duchy.” The pandemic curbed the ambitions of d’Bréck, which was unable to transform itself into a political party and refocused its activities on the cultural sector by relaunching the organisation of political debates and book publishing with the idea of promoting literary translation. A project for a Luxembourg literary translation prize is also in the pipeline.

Nevertheless, the ambition to present a European list was always in the back of Popov’s mind. And that’s where Foka comes in, who has a lot in common with Popov. Both were members of the CNE. Both were members of déi Gréng. Both were not chosen to stand for election. This reinforced Popov’s analysis that “there is a real problem with the representativeness of first-generation Luxembourg citizens who did not go to Luxembourg school.” Both are members of d'Bréck, too, as is co-candidate Danielle Choucroun.

Foka has set himself the target of securing 2% of the vote. In other words, the threshold needed to obtain reimbursement of campaign expenses. But also, according to him, “the threshold to be heard by the other parties.”

In addition to inclusion, the candidates have made immigration and ecology two of the main themes of their programme. This last point seems natural as Foka, Popov and Chateau-Ducos are former Green Party activists. Foka is campaigning for the “Great Green Wall,” a project to reforest Africa and Latin America financed by a carbon tax. “It’s the ‘polluter pays’ principle,” he says. As for immigration, he advocates investing in Africa’s development, which would involve creating an African Silicon Valley in the Sahel region that would eventually attract migrants and discourage them from continuing northwards.

This article in Paperjam. It has been translated and edited for Delano.