The three groups of the presidential majority in the National Assembly on Tuesday called on the president of the institution to sanction the left-wing deputies who participated in the banned rally in memory of Adama Traoré. About 2,000 people, including a dozen LFI and EELV deputies, marched in Paris on Saturday in memory of the 24-year-old, who died seven years ago shortly after his arrest by the gendarmes. The rally had been banned by the police headquarters, which cited fears of public disorder after the recent urban violence.
Any member of the Assembly “may be subject to disciplinary penalties”
“Article 70 paragraph 2 of our regulations, however, provides that any member of the Assembly engaging in demonstrations disturbing order may be subject to disciplinary penalties”, wrote the three presidents of the groups of the presidential camp on Tuesday – Aurore Bergé (Renaissance), Jean-Paul Mattei (MoDem) and Laurent Marcangeli (Horizons) – in a letter addressed to the president (Renaissance) of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet. This article provides that any member of the Assembly “may be subject to disciplinary penalties” by engaging in “demonstrations disturbing the order” or if he “causes a tumultuous scene”.
“The article says that the president of the session has a power of sanction when there is a disturbance of public order, but not a disturbance of public order: a disturbance in the proper functioning of the debates” à l ‘Assembly, retorted in a press conference the socialist deputy Arthur Delaporte. Otherwise, “the Assembly would replace justice and there it is extremely serious”, insisted the elected representative of Calvados.
A referral from the Office of the institution
The three signatories of the letter request a referral to the Bureau of the institution to decide on possible sanctions. They denounce the fact that the “deputies wore their tricolor scarf on this occasion and maintained their presence at a demonstration with the slogan of everyone hates the police”, citing by name elected officials, like the president of the LFI group Mathilde Panot, the LFI president of the Finance Committee Eric Coquerel or the ecologist Sandrine Rousseau.
“It’s a slogan sung for years and no one has ever been to hold the deputies who were in these demonstrations accountable, it’s staggering”, denounced to AFP Eric Coquerel. “In these cases, I will hold all the deputies to account who applauded the far-right unions who explained that justice was a problem, before the National Assembly”, he continued, in reference to a demonstration of police unions in 2021 in which elected officials had participated.
“By dint of banning everything that bothers you, you are stifling democracy,” said ecologist Sophie Taillé-Polian, on Twitter. In November thirty-six deputies of the majority (Renaissance and MoDem) had called in vain for “sanctions” from the National Assembly against deputies participating in prohibited demonstrations, targeting in particular environmentalists who participated in that in Sainte-Soline against a water reservoir project.