VSOn central republican quests, freedoms of assembly and expression require, in times of tension, constant arbitration between the safeguarding of these vital principles for democracy and the preservation of public order. Forgetting this necessary balance would be naive, at a time when the tragedies accumulating in the Middle East are increasing the risks of tension in France, a country where the largest Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe live together, and where the number of acts anti-Semitism is increasing worryingly.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon chose to place the situation in Gaza at the center of the La France Insoumise (LFI) campaign for the European elections on June 9. Highly questionable, this choice, which amounts to exploiting the vote of working-class neighborhoods and encouraging French voters to identify with the protagonists of the war waged by Israel in the Palestinian territory in retaliation for the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, has the right to be defended, just as the Israeli-Palestinian question has the right to be publicly debated.
This is why the decision of university presidents in Bordeaux in October, in Rennes and Lille in April, to cancel for reasons of ” security “ conferences planned by the leader of LFI is worrying. This is why that of the prefect of the North to prohibit the meeting planned as a replacement in Lille, Thursday April 18, in a private room, by Mr. Mélenchon and Rima Hassan, Franco-Palestinian jurist candidate on the LFI list in the European elections, is problematic.
The risk to public security was not supported by any precedent during Mr. Mélenchon’s multiple meetings at universities. On Monday, the leader of the “rebels” also gave, under tension but without incident, a conference at Sciences Po Paris. The decision of the prefect of the North is suspected of responding to political protests, while the choice of a representative of the State in this area should not be suspected of obeying this or that pressure linked to the context. electoral. The fact that protests are enough to provoke the ban results in giving the opponents a right of veto over a public meeting, the prohibition of which should remain entirely exceptional.
Guarantee fundamental public freedoms
In addition, the repetition of insufficiently well-founded prohibitions nourishes the posture of victim of the system and holder of truths that we seek to gag, which delights in Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in difficulty in the polls and prey to the ambitions of his rivals. . His excesses, like that which consisted of comparing the president of the University of Lille to the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, do not need to be fueled.
Emmanuel Macron, after the decision of the prefect of the North, said he hoped that everyone “can express one’s voice”, including Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of whom he “do not share the vision of things ». Rather than incurring the suspicion of defending a divisive political figure to divide the left in the perspective of a difficult European election for his camp, the President of the Republic, as a liberal, would be more in his role by concretely posing as a guarantor fundamental public freedoms, instead of mishandling them as it has already done with the dissolution – reported by the Council of State – of the Earth Uprisings, or the systematic ban – also censored this fall – of pro-Palestinian demonstrations .