The deputy of the National Rally was excluded from the National Assembly for 15 days for “demonstration disturbing order, or which causes a tumultuous scene”. The maximum penalty.
By Charles Sapin
© ARTHUR NICHOLAS ORCHARD / Hans Lucas via AFP
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La fall, even before the ascent. Grégoire de Fournas, 37, expected to be in the spotlight this weekend, but for very different reasons. Elected deputy of the National Rally, last June, in the fifth constituency of Gironde, that of Médoc, this winegrower is part of a new generation of the party to the flame. Symbol of the breakthrough of Marine Le Pen’s movement in this territory of conquest that is for the RN the Atlantic coast, he had to – as revealed Point – be appointed spokesperson for the RN by Jordan Bardella this Saturday in the event of the election of the latter as president of the movement. At least, before the deputy provoked a serious controversy in the National Assembly on Thursday by launching a “let him return to Africa”, immediately interpreted as a racist slippage targeting the black deputy of La France insoumise who spoke in the hemicycle, Carlos Martens Bilongo.
At the end of a meeting of the office of the National Assembly of nearly an hour, this Friday, the authority of the Palais-Bourbon unanimously requested censorship with exclusion for fifteen days from the hemicycle of the deputy Grégoire de Fournas for “demonstration disturbing the order, or which causes a tumultuous scene”. The most serious of sanctions in the scale of those she could pronounce. This was then voted on by a majority of deputies present in plenary session. “This is a political trial that condemns a political idea: one that considers that NGO boats should drop off migrants not in Europe but in the ports of departure. This trial is contrary to democracy and freedom of expression”, reacted from the Assembly Marine Le Pen.
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The elected official claims to have indeed targeted, in his words, the boat of an NGO transporting migrants and not his fellow deputy. Old publications of his pen on social networks unearthed by the press and his political opponents, before he deleted them, however, sow doubt. Above a photo showing people of different skin colors, posted on Twitter by the prefect of Nouvelle-Aquitaine to announce the reception of refugees fleeing the conflict with Russia, the elected official had thus commented last March: “Ukrainians in Africa? »
The RN unites
Within the National Rally, elected officials continue to unite around their colleague. Despite the sanctions pronounced against him by the office of the National Assembly. At least in front of the cameras. Starting with Edwige Diaz. The young deputy knows Grégoire de Fournas well, who has been her assistant to the presidency of the RN de Gironde federation for six years. “He is a guy from the earth, a hard worker, very invested in everything he does, defends the probable future vice-president of the RN. He has been elected from the Atlantic coast since 2015. You can imagine that if there had been comments, in the past, abominable behavior or outings, he would have been put in the spotlight and would have been knocked out a long time ago by our adversaries! Others, less pleasant, speak under the guise of a great regular at “provocativeness”, guilty of a “serious political fault”.
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After joining the National Rally in 2011 by joining Marine Le Pen, this father of five succeeded in being the only candidate of the movement to be elected to the departmental elections on the Atlantic coast in 2015. After a first failure in the legislative elections in 2017, he again failed to conquer the town hall of Pauillac, before losing his seat as departmental councilor in 2021 by one point.
His surprise election in the fifth constituency of Gironde smelled of revenge, made possible in particular by the refusal of the candidate of the presidential majority, Karine Nouette Gaulain, not qualified in the second round, to call for a “republican front” behind the candidate of Nupes. After his fifteen days of exclusion from the National Assembly, Grégoire de Fournas will remain a little over four years in office to be forgotten. Starting with his colleagues in the RN, whose patient strategy of institutionalization he has just torpedoed.