HASWhen Emmanuel Macron went yesterday to Saint-Denis, for one of his very last trips before the second round of the presidential election, activists from En Marche! from the first hour, in the poorest department of France, came forward to report their discomfort to the team of the outgoing president. Barriers and pre-displacement screening did not allow them to manifest themselves. And so it was from afar that they saw Emmanuel Macron alongside Mathieu Hanotin, the PS mayor of Saint-Denis.
Like Manuel Valls, then mayor of Évry, who wanted to see “a few whites, a few whites” in the images of his city, which was a little too dark according to the canons of political communication, they accused executives of En Marche ! of the presidential and legislative campaign to “whitewash” the teams. These citizens of all origins, like local demography, wrote to Stanislas Guerini, the boss of En Marche!, Richard Ferrand, the President of the National Assembly, and François Bayrou, the influential boss of the MoDem , member of the presidential majority.
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The writers of this accusing letter are not anonymous. On the other hand, they do not wish to express themselves by name in the media: “We are reluctant to speak openly because, during the regional elections, a handful of activists confided in the press about the ‘parachuting’ of Prisca Thévenot [porte-parole de LREM, elle avait été désignée dans le 93, NDLR], which had led to a wave of exclusion”, reports one of them. The activists of Seine-Saint-Denis had then dipped their pen in vinegar. “We affirm it, parachuting, nepotism, and cronyism are our main political adversaries”, some of them had protested in a tribune. In the missive sent on March 22 to those close to Emmanuel Macron, these “disgusted” activists do not use the language of wood either.
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“We have invested in all the electoral campaigns since 2017, and we have always helped to support the presidential majority on our territory. It is therefore only natural that we take part in the presidential campaign. […] Discriminatory facts and behavior, not to say racist, on the part of some elected representatives of the presidential majority are undermining the cohesion of the activists mobilized for the campaign, ”they accuse.
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For example, while activists have been on the ground for several weeks for the June legislative elections, they question the team of candidate LREM in the third constituency, in Noisy-le-Grand: “They refused to many times to appear in photos with other activists whose skin color does not correspond to the idea of the Republic that these three elected officials have, “they write. They claim to be nearly 70 activists to be “repelled by these practices”.
“Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 March 2022, the case happened again. The three elected officials refusing to take the traditional photo of the end of the action with us, activists, agreed at the same time to take one without the French activists from the diversity. On too many occasions, these people have boasted about being communitarians on the pretext that people from working-class neighborhoods were present in large numbers during the various actions carried out for this campaign. »
Settlement of political accounts
One of the executives of En Marche!, accused by name in the letter sent to the political figures of the first circle of the outgoing president, refutes this vision: “I am stunned by the remarks made in this letter. I do not feel concerned by these accusations, I am West Indian mixed race. It’s totally unfounded. I have never refused to take a picture with anyone. It is a method of settling accounts! When Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, Secretary of State for Transport, came to our house this week, I was not invited myself. I don’t know the reason. I learned of his visit on social networks. »
Another defendant replied: “It’s a disgusting attack. Everything is wrong in this letter. I have never attacked someone on a supposed communitarianism. The respondents in this letter posed for a photo with activists of all colors when we welcomed Élisabeth Borne, Minister of Labour. It’s a political stunt because I’m competing with the incumbent for the nomination. The subject of discrimination is far too serious a subject to be used in the settling of political scores. »
Joined by Point, François Bayrou affirms not to have received the mail sent to the seat of the Modem. Richard Ferrand and Stanislas Guerini did not respond to our requests.