“I would do it again if I had to do it again”: no remorse for Thomas Portes, the day after his ousting from the National Assembly. The deputy of rebellious France, excluded 15 days for a controversial tweet where we see his foot on a ball with the effigy of Olivier Dussopt expressed his “surprise” at the microphone of BFMTV, when commenting on this sanction .
Present in the Parisian procession, Thomas Portes first said: “I say it again, it’s a tweet that is absolutely not violent”. Then to insist: “No one is fooled by this sanction and the instrumentalization that is made of it when we are full of battle against the reform. (…) There was no call for violence, it was simply within the framework of a mobilization with the labor inspectors”.
“A disproportionate punishment”
He also claims to regret “if this tweet has been misinterpreted by people”. “I don’t have to apologize for a tweet that wasn’t a call to hate,” he finally insisted. According to him, “the majority seeks to hinder the debate”. “It is a disproportionate sanction (…), political, which aims to prevent a vote by a deputy against the pension reform in the Hemicycle”.
This sanction, the highest in the National Assembly, was pronounced this Friday evening against the elected representative of the third district of Seine-Saint-Denis. Last November, it was the deputy of the National Rally Grégoire de Fournas who received it, after having launched in the hemicycle “that he return to Africa”, while Carlos Martens Bilongo, an elected LFI, asked a question on the future of the Ocean Viking, then blocked in the Mediterranean with more than 230 people on board.