The deputies dreamed of it, it was ultimately the senators who had the primacy. They put Jean Castex on the grill. The day after the publication of Emmanuel Macron’s river interview in the Parisian in which the President asserts that he has “Want to piss off the unvaccinated”, clarifications from the head of government were eagerly awaited by parliamentarians. On the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, a few hours after the publication of the shock interview, the deputies, in full examination of the text transforming the health pass into a vaccination pass demanded the arrival of Jean Castex in the hemicycle and explanations before continuing the debates. Despite rumors and long minutes of waiting, the latter will ultimately fail them. It is therefore from the Senate that the first wave of criticism arose on the occasion of the traditional questions to the government on Wednesday afternoon. On the program for the Prime Minister: no less than five questions on the presidential interview, three of which were formulated by group presidents which, regulation obliges, forced Jean Castex to answer in person.
Barely installed in the hemicycle, the tenant of Matignon will not have to wait long before being arrested. First speaker of the meeting, the president of the group Les Républicains Bruno Retailleau castigates “An interview as astonishing as it is distressing” and “Calculated provocations”. “No health emergency justifies words of such brutality, such indignity. No epidemic necessity legitimizes a President of the Republic to go so far as to deny his own compatriots the quality of citizen ” squeaks the senator from Vendée, much applauded by his group. And to question the Prime Minister, former city councilor of Prades in the Pyrénées-Orientales: “Mayor, would you have used those words with that meaning?”
“What the President of the Republic said, I hear it everywhere”
Appropriately preferring “Get to the bottom of the subject”, Castex lingered little on the words of the president. Like the macronists since the publication of the interview, the head of government is content to recall that before Emmanuel Macron, another President of the Republic – Georges Pompidou – had already used the term “Piss off” : “You love History like me, you know very well that these terms had already been spoken” he recalls. At the microphone, the Prime Minister also espouses the defense of “speaking the truth” of the President who would speak like the French. “When I go into the field and go to critical care services, what the President of the Republic said I hear everywhere” he testifies. Behind him, the government spokesman Gabriel Attal nods with a long nod under the bronca of the senators, visibly unconvinced.
Throughout the afternoon, the streamers of senators fuse. Communist senator from Pas-de-Calais Cathy Apourceau-Poly judges that “The people deserve something other than insults and threats to banish society”.The leader of environmentalists Guillaume Gontard considers that presidential swear words “Let see a man who can no longer perform his duties and who is impatient to do battle in the electoral arena” . “He gets lost in the division with childish words unworthy of his function”lashes the senator from Isère. Without however managing to get Castex off its hinges. Unperturbed, the Prime Minister avoids going back on the words of his boss and confines himself to hammering out the government’s strategy. “Pragmatic, coherent and balancedAccording to him, the latter is essentially based on vaccination. “We still have to push for vaccination […] Vaccination is and remains the best weapon. We are twenty times more likely to go to critical care if we are not vaccinated than if we are vaccinated »He recalls. Before he too let himself go to a criticism of the unvaccinated. “Who insults the Nation? Who is fracturing the Nation? Who leads caregivers in our emergencies to make dramatic ethical choices? It’s a tiny minority! ” gets angry the tenant of Matignon promising, in passing “To continue tirelessly” to try to convince the unvaccinated. The same ones that Emmanuel Macron has “Want to piss off”so.