Far from the French government’s call for national unity, politicians, especially from the radical left and the majority, are bickering about their roles in instigating or calming the riots as tensions in the streets have begun to ease.
“As calm returns, debates will resume, which is normal, democratic and healthy. But I think it is important that this does not take precedence over national unity”, declared Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne at a meeting with majority MPs on Tuesday morning.
However, since the violence erupted in response to a police murder a 17-year-old during a traffic stop, the national unity being called for is far from being achieved.
The government has proposed “no political action” in response to the riots, Mathilde Panot, president of Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, recently said.
The government is “afraid of the police”, she explained, and “refuses to learn the lessons from this tragedy”. “There will be no return to calm if there is no justice”, she added, calling in particular for a rebuild of France’s policing strategy.
In response to these accusations, Borne questioned the attitude of La France Insoumise, which she says “refuses to condemn the violence”.
By refusing to call for calm, “you are stepping outside the republican sphere” and “you are pouring oil on the fire”, she told the radical left MPs, accusing them of “instrumentalising a tragedy”. “You have chosen another path, that of excess, of verbal brutality, that of the constant excuse for violence”, she added.
Criticism also came from LFI’s own Socialist and Communist allies.
Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel, for example, stated on Tuesday that he “disassociated himself from comments” by Mélenchon and some of the Insoumise, some of whom “refused to call for calm” while others went as “so far as to say that this violence is legitimate, to the point of justifying it”.
The left also rebuked the government’s “deafening silence” concerning the online fundraising campaign for the policeman accused of killing the young man, which was launched by Jean Messiha, the spokesman of far-right candidate Éric Zemmour during the presidential election, and which has exceeded €1million.
This would show “collusion” between Borne’s government and the far right, according to Emeline K/Bidi leftist MP, who calls on the prime minister to ban this fund-raising campaign as it would breach public order.
The left-wing alliance considers the prime minister’s condemnation of the fund-raising campaign in words alone to be inadequate, as she considered that it “did not help to bring about peace” but allowed the campaign.
On the other side of the political spectrum, the far right is seeking to establish a link between urban violence and immigration, as Michaël Taverne, a Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) MP, did on Tuesday at the National Assembly. He urged the government to “expel foreign delinquents” in the face of the “security chaos” affecting France.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin asked the RN “not to confuse the debates”, explaining that 90% of those arrested were French nationals. “We want neither hatred of the police nor hatred of foreigners”, he concluded.
Finally, Marine Le Pen accused the government of turning France into “hell” and “a spectacle that afflicts the whole world”, predicting for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris “a security disaster”. “The only thing you are capable of is caricature”, deplored Elisabeth Borne, according to whom Marine Le Pen “[is] choosing division” while reiterating the need for “national unity”.
(Davide Basso | EURACTIV.fr)
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