Paris (AFP)
Jean-Luc Mélenchon returns to the controversy: the words of the leader of LFI linking terrorism and the presidential election arouse the indignation on Monday of many political leaders, the rebels trying to unite behind him.
After his "Republic, it's me" launched during a stormy search at the headquarters of La France Insoumise in 2018, the candidate for the Elysee is again in turmoil, accused of having made "indecent remarks on Sunday" "even" conspirators ", less than a year from the presidential election.
"You will see that in the last week of the presidential campaign, we will have a serious incident or a murder. It was Merah in 2012 (jihadist author of the killings in Toulouse and Montauban, in particular in a Jewish school), it was the 'attack the last week on the Champs Elysées (in 2017, a jihadist murdered the police officer Xavier Jugelé). Before we had Papy Voise (Paul Voise, a retiree assaulted at his home in Orléans in April 2002), of whom no one has never heard of it after. All that is written in advance, "said the leader of the Insoumis in the program Political Questions (France Inter / Le Monde / Franceinfo).
These remarks immediately provoked indignation, in the political class but also among relatives of victims of attacks, such Latifa Ibn Ziaten, whose military son was killed by Mohammed Merah, and who denounced "inadmissible" remarks, demanding "respect for the victims".
Patrick Klugman, lawyer for Samuel Sandler, who lost his son and his two grandsons, killed by Mohamed Merah, threatened the Insubordinate with legal action if he did not withdraw his remarks, "of extraordinary gravity ".
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Several members of the government, like Marlène Schiappa, accused Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Monday of making "conspiratorial statements" and "shame" which "lack respect to the families of victims" of the terrorist attacks.
Secretary of State Cédric O for his part denounced a "political and republican shipwreck".
- "Distressing buzz" -
On the left, if environmentalists and communists have remained discreet, several socialist leaders have stepped up to the plate, such as the president of the PS deputies Valérie Rabault, who believes that such "demagoguery" prevented "claiming the presidential election".
On the right, Michel Barnier, potential Republican presidential candidate, lambasted remarks "unworthy of the Republic".
"It's to vomit," said Jean-Luc Moudenc, the mayor of Toulouse where part of the killings perpetrated by Merah took place.
"Precisely, it is this unworthy instrumentalisation for political argumentation purposes during the electoral campaign that Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounced", replied the LFI deputy Adrien Quatennens.
Its leader himself, two hours after his show, assumed to emphasize the predictability of the attacks: "The murderers are waiting for the best time to talk about them", he wrote on social networks, while lamenting "a distressing buzz".
Behind, it is the whole rebellious France which seems to officially unite, as demonstrated by the support of the LFI deputy Clémentine Autain, who on certain episodes of the past did not hesitate to express reservations.
"Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not a conspirator. What he meant is that we do not accept the instrumentalization of these extremely serious facts which occur in the last week of an important election," he said. -she insists.
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But a certain unease was perceptible during the passage in the morning of Cnews of the candidate for the presidency of the Île-de-France region.
"Obviously, some were genuinely hurt by the comments made," she said, referring to a "collected comment" that was easy to "misinterpret".
The leader of the Insoumis is used to controversies that he says he considers each time as the defense of a "system" against his candidacy.
"Each time, Mélenchon uses the same technique: approaching a red line to make himself audible to certain electorates who would not necessarily vote for him," analyzes his biographer Lilian Alemagna, a journalist at Liberation, on Twitter.
The fact remains that this controversy suddenly disrupts the climate of his pre-campaign, after a sequence deemed good by all the rebels: the demonstration of the police, in which they were the only ones on the left to have loudly proclaimed not wanting to participate .
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