The “supreme duty” must be taken, not without “trial and error”: the cases of Quatennens and Bayou highlight the ambiguities of left-wing parties facing the new political Metoo agreement to be exemplary in the matter of violence. against women.
“Faced with the legitimate questioning of women, of feminists, of people who have become victims and who feel insulted every time this type of story comes out in political circles, we have a higher duty, a representative duty” as “the elected French people,” Sandra explained on franceinfo on Wednesday Regol, Vice-President of the Environmental Group of the National Assembly.
“Our political ethics are not the same as the criminal code,” added the Senate’s Socialist Vice-President Laurence Rossignol on Europe 1 antenna, for which political sanctions decisions must be made quickly, domestically, before. Possible court time, definitely longer.
Regarding the rebel French figure Adrien Quatenen, who admitted domestic violence that led to his wife’s baton, he recalled that justice could have decided to close the case without further action. “However, the facts exist, they have been identified, and she is a political representative, in a political formation that is part of the fight against violence against women (…) so her political formation must settle its case first,” he argued.
The LFI MP announced on Sunday that he is stepping down from his role as coordinator of La France insoumise. On Tuesday, he was also “withdrawn from parliamentary work” by the LFI group in the assembly, but “not banned from the hemicycle”.
isolated cases
Meanwhile, European Ecology boss Julien Bayou was also sentenced to a “withdrawal” measure after twenty-four hours following allegations made by Ecolog MP Sandrine Rousseau on Monday, which revealed psychological abuse against her former companion. This time from the position of co-president of the group in the Assembly.
“It’s just necessary to give a signal,” Sandra Regol assessed, and assessed that “it’s the opposite, which should be surprising, you know these ministers who don’t move away from their functions, these parties, where they never take the thermometer of violence against women.”.
On Tuesday, the same denunciation of the LFI MP, Clementine Otten, in particular about Damien Abadi, who has been accused by several women of rape, but remained for six weeks the Minister of Solidarity and still the MP of the Renaissance group.
The presidential party actually has a “whistleblower” cell. Other parties, such as LFI or EELV, have created bodies of this type, including internal investigative powers and sanctions, but their results are not always convincing.
Eric Coquerel, Jean-Luc Melenchon’s rapprochement and called to chair the Assembly’s finance committee, and Taha Bouhafs, who lost LFI’s investment in the legislative elections, were thus criticized from the start. of July.
But in the case of Adrienne Quatenens, “we’ve gone strong,” even if “it’s not perfect,” Ms Otten admitted on the set of BFMTV. “The Metoo wave is quite recent, and all its effects must be integrated,” he argued.
“Party Protection”
“Yes, we assume that we are closing our eyes, that this is a difficult issue,” LFI MP Daniel Obono also said before the press. “It’s a somewhat subtle axis,” Ms. Rossignol observed, admitting that Adrienne Quatenens, for example, was currently in “no man’s land.”
The culture in the parties is also in trouble. The uneasiness was palpable among LFI MPs on Tuesday, who were questioned at a press conference about their leader Jean-Luc Melenchon’s reaction to the Quatennens case on Sunday. The former presidential candidate praised the “dignity” and “courage” of his comrade.
“Protection of the party, protection of the leader often comes before consistency,” laments Ms. Roscinnoli.
More than 500 feminist activists on the forum condemn this “system of protection of aggressors in politics”. “When a political group has a feminist agenda, especially in terms of women’s rights and the fight against gender-based violence, we have the right to expect it to stop defending the aggressors and unconditionally support the victims of patriarchal violence,” they wrote.