ON THE JDD
"We will table in the coming days in the Senate a bill to counteract what is a form of secession, since these lists want to favor part of the population while our Republic is indivisible," said Bruno Retailleau in the Journal du Dimanche . The chairman of the LR group in the Senate justifies his reasoning by relying on the Union of French Muslim Democrats (UDMF). "After presenting a list to the Europeans, the UDMF now wants to present it to the municipal authorities," he explains. Created in 2012, this party has collected less than 29,000 votes to Europeans, with however peaks in some municipalities in the Paris region.
The senator proposes "to prohibit any public financing of a communitarian movement, which does not respect the principles of national sovereignty and secularism, and to prohibit, under the control of the administrative judge, candidatures and communitarian electoral propaganda".
"A strict neutrality" for the elected
This will imply "the prohibition of religious symbols such as the veil on posters or the professions of faith" and "we also hope that the elected representatives, in the exercise of their mandate, are from now on held to a strict neutrality, as it is the case for public servants, when they represent the community, particularly during official ceremonies or meetings of territorial assemblies, "continues Retailleau.
Today, the jurisprudence of the Court of Cassation does not extend to city councilors the duty of religious neutrality of public officials.
"Emmanuel Macron is a formidable ambiguity"
The president of the Hauts-de-France region Xavier Bertrand (ex-LR) put the issue of these lists on the table mid-September, asking the government to take steps to prohibit "that there will be the next municipal elections 'communitarian lists' ". The Minister in charge of Local Authorities Sebastien Lecornu instead called this week to "local republican fronts" to block possible community lists at the municipal elections in March 2020.
Mr. Retailleau judges that "political Islam tries to build a counter-society with separatist and anti-republican aims" and that "faced with this, Emmanuel Macron is of a formidable ambiguity". The senator further believes that "if the constitutional revision comes to an end, it will also clarify our definition of secularism." He proposes "to inscribe in the Constitution that 'no one can rely on his religion to avoid the common rule'", which according to him "will regulate all the debates on differentiated swimming pool hours, for example".