2023-10-03 05:39:41
Sophia Chikirou, candidate (La France insoumise) in the legislative elections, in front of the National Assembly, in Paris, June 13, 2022. AGNES DHERBEYS / MYOP POUR “LE MONDE”
There are calls to order that escape everyone except their target. This March 6, 2022, the approximately 15,000 people gathered on the Gros-Caillou esplanade, in Lyon, to attend Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s meeting did not take offense when the speakers began to spit out the entrance music of the presidential candidate of La France insoumise (LFI) in the middle of Mathilde Panot’s speech. They barely remember it. Their leader promptly climbed onto the stage, red tie and loud speech, setting out for fifty minutes of speeches. The member for Val-de-Marne welcomed him with a fitting smile, before backstage, tears of rage in his eyes.
His speech, a long-prepared honor, was not cut by chance. During the rehearsal, Sophia Chikirou, a management service provider, expressed deep disagreements with her text, demanding changes refused by the speaker. Linchpin of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s breakthrough in working-class neighborhoods in 2017, president of the LFI group in the National Assembly in 2021, coordinator of activist mobilization in 2022… never mind the predominant place of Mathilde Panot within the movement , no one resists Sophia Chikirou with impunity.
Known in the party since 2011, the sentimental relationship – sometimes discontinuous – between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Sophia Chikirou was unknown to the public until October 16, 2018. They came to search Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s home at dawn as part of the investigation into her 2017 campaign accounts, the investigators were surprised to find the one who had assumed the role of communications director and second service provider. From a private subject, their link becomes of public interest, as the courts ruled in August 2019, rejecting the couple’s requests for damages after the publication of an article by Closer. “The evocation by the article (…) of a real or supposed sentimental relationship maintained in these current legal circumstances (…) [est] likely to contribute to a debate of general interest of which it is legitimate to inform the public”justifies the judge.
At the heart of the “rebellious” political apparatus
Internally, the judicial investigation revives criticism around the influence of Sophia Chikirou in the party’s decisions and fears that some of her practices endanger the movement. According to documents and testimonies collected by The worldthe “Chikirou method” is, in fact, a mixture of brutality and financial management with sometimes questionable legality, lasting, according to its critics, thanks to its status as a “chief’s wife”an expression used by “rebellious” executives.
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