In the News: the Fillon affair, the shadow of a doubt

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François Fillon and his wife on their arrival at the Paris Tribunal, Wednesday February 24, 2020. REUTERS / Charles Platiau

By: Norbert Navarro

Publicity

The shadow of a doubt in the judicial treatment of this case which will be tried at first instance in eight days, and even "  the poison of doubt  ", launches the front page of the Sunday Journal , to evoke the statements of the former prosecutor from the financial pole on the "pressures" that, under oath, Eliane Houlette confesses to having suffered during the investigation of the Fillon case in the middle of the 2017 electoral campaign.

These “  confidences  ” having, as the JDD admits , brings out the “  suspicions of the instrumentalization of justice  ”, the Minister of Justice, in an interview with this weekly, rightly considers “  essential to remove this deleterious doubt for the 'judicial institution  '. Because "  rightly or wrongly  ", the words of the former financial prosecutor have "  distilled doubt on the independence and impartiality of justice in the conduct of this case,  " admits Nicole Belloubet in Le Journal du Dimanche .

Journal in the columns of which the Keeper of the Seals does not exclude carrying out a judicial inspection, if the Superior Council of the magistrature, which was activated in this case by the president Macron, "  considers it necessary  ".

No doubt about this affair, Brice Hortefeux does not have one. According to him, "  the result  " of the 2017 presidential election, "  obviously  ", was "  distorted  ", said the former Minister of the Interior of Nicolas Sarkozy in the Journal du Dimanche.

Manuel Valls and the explosive “race war

Protests against racism around the world marked the week. And in France, Manuel Valls came out of the woods. The former Socialist Prime Minister deplores nothing less than a "race  war  "! His comrades in the Socialist Party were speechless, starting with the First Secretary, Olivier Faure, who said he was "  dismayed  " by the declarations of Manuel Valls, according to whom "  the class struggle disappears in favor of the war between races  ”.

To make matters worse, the former Prime Minister of François Hollande told the weekly Valeurs Actuelles . According to Manuel Valls, "  this war is terrible, because it essentializes according to the color of skin. It is aggregating but it is also in competition with political Islam. It's an explosive cocktail  , ”said the former Prime Minister at Valeurs Actuelles .

Elisabeth Badinter and the explosive "new racism"

Behind his shocking statements, does Valls hide political ulterior motives that polemicists attribute to him? This cymbal stroke, in any case, echoes other warnings from the same barrel. Witness, Elisabeth Badinter. On the cover of L'Express , this philosopher says little else this week. Enlightenment specialist, Elisabeth Badinter deplores "  the birth of a new racism  " of which "  the White man  " is, she says, "  the last avatar  " and which can lead to "  real separatism  ". If she welcomes the awareness that followed the murder of George Floyd and the demonstrations against racism that followed around the world, Elisabeth Badinter "  strongly alerts against the emergence of an" anti-racist "current which insists on what sets us apart rather than what unites us  ”.

In L'Express , Elisabeth Badinter affirms that today, “  the Indigenists would like to sell us an incredible regression: the idea that the other is a foreigner with whom we have nothing to do. It is obvious that we are going towards serious conflicts by developing these theories  , ”she warns in L'Express .

Michel Onfray legalizes the Popular Front

Also in this orchestra, a new instrument was born this week, exactly June 18 (the date was not chosen at random) and it will be on newsstands for the first time the day after tomorrow. It is also a new magazine, the name of which was not chosen at random either, since it is Front Populaire . Launched in its online version on the day of the eightieth anniversary of General de Gaulle's June 18 appeal, this new colleague, whose paper version will indeed come out on Tuesday June 23, is the quarterly review of the philosopher Michel Onfray. And its title is a reference to the government of the left having, under the leadership of Léon Blum, ruled France for two years from April 1936.

And yet. Around Michel Onfray, former elected officials, "yellow vests", teachers and other lawyers or peasants are "  from the left, from the right, from elsewhere or from nowhere  ", states Front Populaire. Which review, in the framework of its team, includes a now well-known professor of medicine, the cantor of chloroquine Didier Raoult.

We know the motto of the newspaper Le Figaro , borrowed from Beaumarchais: "  Without freedom to blame, there is no flattering praise  "). Front Populaire chose to use La Boétie in the Discourse on voluntary servitude a century earlier, its motto being: "  Be determined not to serve any more and you are free  ", this review intending to be "  the perpetual parliament of ideas of what people want against populicides who want their deaths  . " As of now online on the site of this new colleague, Cahiers de doléances, like those of 1789 at Versailles, four years before the beheading of the King of France…

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