In the columns of Parisian, this January 17, an LREM deputy returns to Emmanuel Macron’s remarks about non-vaccinated people. He deplored such an exit from the road that he and party supporters did not see coming.
A slippage that was not unanimous, even within his party. On January 5, readers of the Parisian discovered with surprise the words of Emmanuel Macron about the approximately five million French people who refuse vaccination against Covid-19. “I’m not for pissing off the French. I rail all day against the administration when it blocks them. Well, there, the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off”, affirmed the President, accusing the antivax “of an immense moral fault”. On the side of the LREM deputies, anger is mounting. One of them, elected in the south of France, is interviewed in the same newspaper on January 17. The latter commented on the verbatim of its leader, regretting not having been kept informed beforehand. An obvious lack of respect according to him.
LREM elected officials describe his attitude as disrespectful
“And we stayed there like idiots. Not knowing what to say or what to do”, first explained the elected southerner. And to add about this morning of January 5: “No one had been told before about this interview. It’s really disrespectful to us.” For other deputies, the remarks are more measured, although on the same line: “It’s true that sometimes we have the feeling of being left out a small quarterly meeting with parliamentarians would have been more homogenizing”, says Pascale Fontenel, having since joined the MoDem. The latter also explains that she sent several messages to alert the President to a social revolt: “And a few weeks later, the Yellow Vests arrived. If we had been heard…”
“He assumes his choices”
According to another elected official interviewed by The Parisian, Emmanuel Macron does not follow the example of his predecessors, many of whom receive deputies at the Élysée several times a year: “Jack Chirac, every week he saw a few deputies in a small group. A president should do that. He should treat us more“, he explains. On this subject, the boss of the LREM group Christophe Castaner frankly admits the positioning of its President: “He assumes not to permanently treat the majority as others have done. It is also a choice. Sometimes difficult for some, but which marks a presidency turned towards the French and not on itself.”