She is 48 years old from Ivory Coast and was elected in the Val de Marne region, sidelining the Olympic champion, sports minister and candidate for Macron's alliance.
"My victory is historic," she said immediately after her election yesterday in the second round of France's parliamentary elections.
Rachel Quete is the first chambermaid to sit on the benches of the French National Assembly, according to the entire French press.
In the first round of the parliamentary elections, for the Val de Marne seat in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, 48-year-old Keke, a candidate for the left-wing "Nupes" alliance under Mélenchon, managed to put the glasses on Roxanne Maracino, a top-performing swimmer, Olympic champion and then Macron's sports minister.
In the second round, the 48-year-old maid won by 14.663 votes to Maracino's 14,486. "The National Assembly will be shaking," she wrote in her Twitter post today, dancing with friends and colleagues to celebrate her victory.
[BR/][BR/]Keke learned to fight at a young age. At age 12, she dropped out of school to care for her four younger siblings after their mother died. She started working in a hairdressing salon since the only salary coming into the house was that of her father, a bus driver.
At 26, she had already become a mother and in 1999, she emigrated to France. She worked in an uncle's hairdressing salon in Paris and later as a cashier, a home helper for the elderly and a maid. For 15 years, she cleaned up to 40 rooms a day as a contract worker on a "starvation wage" in a French multinational chain of budget hotels.
In July 2019, she and 27 other colleagues - mostly African women - decided to take to the streets to demand equal economic treatment. Their mobilization lasted 22 months and ended with the strikers' vindication: a wage increase from 250 to 500 euros, overtime pay, plus a small meal allowance.
Until today, Rachel Keke, a mother of five children and a naturalized French citizen, worked at the same hotel, but in a different position. Every day, she inspected up to 100 rooms. But now she is preparing to sit on the benches of the French National Assembly.
Source: protothema.gr
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