Paris (AFP)
The president of the UDI and deputy of Seine-Saint-Denis Jean-Christophe Lagarde considers that the non respect of confinement in his department is "a legend" and protested Thursday against those who make popular neighborhoods "scapegoats" ".
"Let's stop with these fantasies". A curfew is not necessary because "97% of the people who are controlled in the street are people who have the paper" of exit certificate during the confinement, assured Mr. Lagarde to the antenna of South Radio.
"I know very well that we are used to taking scapegoats. I think we can for once be more responsible, and look at reality," added the president of the UDI.
Several elected officials, notably on the right and on the far right, had pointed to neighborhoods that did not respect containment measures.
The president of the National Rally Marine Le Pen had denounced the absence of a "response" from the State in these suburbs. The deputy LR Eric Ciotti had called to "deploy the army" there.
The former mayor of Drancy notes that "on Sunday, the shops are closed, there is no one on the streets".
According to Jean-Christophe Lagarde, if the hospitals of Seine-Saint-Denis were "more quickly overwhelmed" by the influx of patients with covid-19, it is because there are "fewer hospital beds, fewer resuscitation beds than elsewhere ", and not because of a lack of respect for confinement.
Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said Wednesday, before the fact-finding mission of the Assembly on the health crisis, that "in many so-called difficult neighborhoods" the confinement instructions were respected "very seriously", contrary to "what is said some". And that he was "not sure" that those who had left for their second homes "had made it possible to contain the circulation of the virus".
© 2020 AFP