The left-wing MPs who refused to shake the hand of the youngest (National Rally) MP, Flavien Termet, while he was watching the ballot box for the election of the President of the National Assembly, were – rightly – called idiots. But it wouldn’t be so bad if it was just a matter of failing in basic courtesy, parliamentary or not. We have known for a long time that there is nothing better to expect from those – rebels or environmentalists – who have made this kind of behavior their trademark. They were not going to miss the opportunity to cheaply heroize themselves by showing the firmness of their bodies standing as a bulwark against the brown plague. So noted. It’s ridiculous, but it’s not dramatic.
What is much more so – and in truth unforgivable – is that Olivier Faure, Boris Vallaud and Agnès Pannier-Runacher also refused to shake this hand, because that entails a complete betrayal of the spirit of responsibility of which “their” left, called the government, claims to be the guardian in contrast to all the others.
God knows, however, that she deafens us with her love of the Nation. She wraps it in the folds of her newspeak, advocates “Living together”, teaches us how to go about “building society” and designates Parliament as the very high place of Her presence in the world. A true credo, sung with fervour. As among the worst chairwomen.
Our Constitution – which our friends wear around their necks when it suits them – teaches (art. 27) that “any imperative mandate is null”. By that, understand that it is “representative” by absolute principle. This means that each deputy represents the entire Nation and not his constituency, nor his party, nor indeed only his peers by gender, age, skin color, origins, sexual preferences, etc. He embodies and must serve the Nation, the whole Nation, nothing but the Nation. In this sense, the famous Mélenchonian yelp let out during the search of the LFI offices in 2018 – “The Republic is me!” – was not lacking in legal accuracy. On protocol occasions, where symbolism plays a full role, the hand refused to a deputy is necessarily refused to France. There cannot be a pariah deputy, nor a sub-deputy, nor anything that prevents seeing in him a valid fraction of the entire country; except to suggest that there would be no Nation at all, or even that there would be within it a caste of sub-French. Had they thought so, our rabbit-skinned grumblers would not have gone about it any differently.
God also knows that I am not suspected of complacency towards the RN. Nevertheless. 11 million French people relegated to the status of bad subjects, unworthy of parliamentary presence because they voted for this party? And all this in a country that has made pluralism one of its other constitutional requirements? It is simply shameful, as it is shameful to join forces to prevent deputies from these ranks from exercising functional responsibilities within the Assembly, what is more without showing the shadow of a symmetrical aversion for the elected representatives of LFI. Shameful and completely idiotic if not frankly suicidal. There are at least two reasons for this.
The first is that it is delusional, for those who do not see in civil war the ultimate goal of political action, to transform the adversary into an enemy. The second is that it is inept to strengthen those we intend to fight. Can we believe that the humiliation suffered will not boost them? Can we reasonably think that these political forces obsessed by the idea that “the system” has always organized itself to deprive them of power will not emerge strengthened by the verification of their fears? Can we “in republican responsibility”, as they say in the PS, not fear that these same forces, nourished by an understandable resentment, will make use of this same power in a clannish, closed, terribly sure of itself and, by the same token, even more devastating, the day they enjoy it? All this is appalling. Pignoufesque, but above all irresponsible.
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