It is a photo that will have cost the member dearly. The elected LFI Thomas Portes was excluded 15 days from the National Assembly, this Friday, after the broadcast the day before of a photo showing him the foot on a ball with the effigy of the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, in full examination of the pension reform project. Severe, the decision was decided in office of the Assembly then voted in the hemicycle.
“I repeated in front of the office of the Assembly that this tweet was not a call for violence”, defended Thomas Portes. And to assure, again: “I have never called for violence against the minister, a member of the government or any deputy whatsoever. “I will withdraw my tweet the day you withdraw your reform which will sacrifice thousands of people”, had challenged the Insoumis earlier in the hemicycle.
“You are looking for the Insoumis, you will find them”, launched the Insoumise Danièle Obono in the majority, during the vote of the sanction against Thomas Portes. The president of the LFI parliamentary group, Mathilde Panot, for her part denounced a “completely disproportionate sanction”. “After the pillory for Thomas Portes, railroad deputy, Macron will ban all the upheavals in the country’s celebrations”, denounced the former presidential candidate for LFI, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on Twitter.
Within the left alliance Nupes, if the initial message of Thomas Portes was variously appreciated, the sanction is considered far too severe. “We contest the parallelism that has been made” with the case of deputy RN Grégoire de Fournas, protested the communist Pierre Dharréville. This deputy from Gironde had also been excluded from the National Assembly for 15 days after making remarks deemed racist in November.
“What happened is serious”
“The sanction is excessive, also denounced on Twitter the ecologist Sandrine Rousseau, deputy of Paris. It trivializes that of the National Rally which was a racist remark in the hemicycle. What happened tonight is serious. “They want to take away a voice from us (in the National Assembly) so tomorrow let’s be millions in the streets to denounce their authoritarianism”, also reacted the deputy for Hérault Sylvain Carrière with the hashtag #SoutienThomasPortes that many rebellious elected officials were trying to make a breakthrough on Twitter.
“What we are currently seeing (…) with our invectives, with our insults, with hubbub, (is not) not worthy of the National Assembly”, declared the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, inviting the deputies to “show themselves worthy and respectful”. “We won’t let anything go. No threat, no intimidation,” National Assembly majority leader Aurore Bergé posted on Twitter, calling on Thomas Portes to delete his tweet.
“I welcome the decision of the office of the National Assembly to pronounce the exclusion of 15 days of the deputy Insoumis Thomas Portes because of a shameful tweet and his unacceptable behavior”, for his part rejoiced the president of the Republicans. , Éric Ciotti, denouncing a “desacralization of our institutions” on the part of Nupes.
“We can fight ideas, but we are never obliged to attack people: people are always respectable”, for her part denounced the president of the RN group in the National Assembly, Marine Le Pen, deploring the gesture of the LFI deputy. And the former presidential candidate to denounce, on BFMTV, a “headlong rush which attacks the serenity necessary for the debate in the hemicycle”.