PARIS (Reuters) – A deputy from the National Rally provoked outrage on Thursday in the National Assembly, during the session of questions to the government, for remarks deemed racist made within the Hemicycle and immediately condemned by Elisabeth Borne.
“Let him return to Africa” or “Let them return to Africa”, launched the deputy RN Grégoire de Fournas while the deputy of Val d’Oise Carlos Martens Bilongo challenged the government on the policy of aid to migrants.
“Today, I was sent back to my skin color. I was born in France, I am a French deputy”, declared Carlos Martens Bilongo. “We see the true face of the National Rally. It’s shameful.”
“Racism has no place in democracy. The office of the Assembly will meet and will have to take the necessary sanctions”, reacted Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne after a question session. news suspended following this incident.
The President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, subsequently confirmed the meeting of the Bureau of the Assembly, on Friday, “the only body competent to decide on sanctions more important than the call to order, so that it pronounces on the facts which have occurred in our hemicycle”.
“We are going to ask for the strongest sanction, that is to say the exclusion for several months of this deputy”, warned Mathilde Panot, the president of the LFI group in the Assembly.
In a statement, the left-wing alliance Nupes demanded the highest sanction by the regulations of the National Assembly, namely censorship with exclusion.
“shame”
“What happened just now in the Hemicycle is just unacceptable”, estimated for his part Sylvain Maillard, vice-president of the Renaissance group, announcing that the elected representatives of the presidential party would no longer sit “ as long as an extremely heavy sanction within the office of the presidents will not (be) pronounced”.
“No media posture will succeed in masking the reality of the frontist ideology”, commented for its part the Les Républicains party on its Twitter account.
The deputy of Gironde Grégoire de Fournas declared that his remarks did not target the LFI deputy but the migrants stranded in the Mediterranean Sea, denouncing a “manipulation” of LFI and considering that he did not have to make an apology.
“There was absolutely nothing wrong with it,” he said.
“Grégoire de Fournas obviously spoke about the migrants transported by boat by the NGOs mentioned by our colleague in his question to the government. The controversy created by our political adversaries is crude and will not deceive the French”, assured Marine Le Pen, the president of the RN group in the Assembly, on her Twitter account.
On the government side, several ministers have targeted the National Rally as a whole.
“From the FN to the RN, the name changes, but the hideous references and despicable habits remain. What a shame”, tweeted the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin.
“All standardization efforts are just artifice,” commented his Labor colleague, Olivier Dussopt. “The racist remarks of an FN deputy are (…) the indicator of the permanence of their hatred.”
(Written by Jean-Stéphane Brosse, edited by Kate Entringer)