Present in the Parisian procession, the LFI deputy, temporarily excluded from the National Assembly, affirmed that he “would do the tweet again if it had to be done again”.
By The Point.fr
© LOU BENOIST / AFP
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Ie Insoumis deputy Thomas Portes, excluded 15 days from the Assembly for a tweet targeting the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, “assumes” his gesture. Questioned on Saturday during the Parisian demonstration against the pension reform, the elected official, who no longer wears his tricolor scarf since his temporary exclusion on Friday, denounces “a disproportionate political sanction”. His message, he said, was “not a call for hatred” and “only if it was misinterpreted by people (he) regretted it”. But, “I would do the tweet again if it had to be done again,” he added on BFMTV.
Thomas Portes was excluded for 15 days of sessions after having posted on social networks a photo where he posed, with his tricolor scarf, his foot resting on a ball bearing the effigy of Olivier Dussopt, bearer of the government project on the retreats to the Assembly.
“It is a disproportionate sanction, it is a political sanction which aims to prevent a vote by a deputy against the pension reform in the hemicycle”, denounced the elected representative of Seine-Saint-Denis. “If a deputy must be sanctioned for a political tweet, it is a very serious precedent which opens in this country. »
The photo caused an uproar in the hemicycle. “Serious facts have taken place: the head of Minister Olivier Dussopt has been symbolically crushed by a deputy wearing the tricolor scarf”, was moved by the head of the Renaissance deputies Aurore Bergé. And government spokesman Olivier Véran to denounce the brand of “extreme”. LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for his part, wanted to put things into perspective. It was just a “game of messing things up”: “Tin cans with heads on them – sometimes it’s mine – and people throwing balls into them, that’s always been there. »
Under the protests of the Insoumis, the deputies voted by a sit-stand vote, after a meeting of the office of the Assembly, to exclude Thomas Portes for fifteen days. The proposed “censorship with temporary exclusion”, the most severe disciplinary penalty for deputies, entails a ban on appearing at the Palais-Bourbon for fifteen sitting days, and the deprivation of half of the parliamentary allowance for two months.
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