Marine Le Pen on Wednesday criticized the boycott by leftist and Renaissance deputies of a charity match of the Assembly football team, seeing in it “hate all the time, everywhere”, while the majority, divided , feared to present the RN as a “victim”. “It says a lot about these people in reality, it’s hatred all the time, everywhere, the fight all the time,” said the president of the National Rally group at the National Assembly.
“Sport is the place where you don’t do politics”
“In reality, they go against one of the great values of sport which is that sport, precisely, is the place where you don’t do politics,” she added, convinced that groups calling not to participate in this match will be “judged harshly by the French”. The presidents of the PS groups, Boris Vallaud, and LFI, Mathilde Panot confirmed on Tuesday that their deputies would not participate in this charity match, believing that the RN thus hoped to continue its business of “trivialization”. The patron saint of Renaissance deputies Aurore Bergé also recommended to her troops “not to participate in a match which will give rise to a ‘team photo'”: but “we do not play in the same team. Neither far right nor leftmost”.
If the RN sits in numbers in the Assembly, “that does not mean that we must participate in their desire to normalize”, urged government spokesman Olivier Véran on Cnews. Olivier Véran nevertheless recognized an “ambivalence” to boycott this match: “By telling you that I would not play, I am participating in the phenomenon which consists in raising the feeling that they are ostracized, that they are victims of the system , etc”, he developed. Asked about Sud Radio, the Minister of Solidarity Jean-Christophe Combe also regretted this boycott which “makes the 89 deputies of the RN rather sympathetic today”. “I don’t play football but I think it’s not the right way to fight the ideas of the RN”, it’s “a bad example, a bad fight to lead”, he continued.
Appalling this story of the Assembly’s football team! I have been a member for a long time and we have always overcome political differences on the ground, we must continue like this. To politicize everything poorly is unbearable
— Eric Woerth (@ericwoerth) September 28, 2022
“Dismaying this story of the Assembly’s football team! I have been a member for a long time and we have always overcome political differences on the ground, we must continue like this. To politicize everything poorly is unbearable”, insisted Éric Woerth deputy Rebirth, in a tweet.