The French Republic in mourning. Emmanuel Macron will chair, on Wednesday February 14, a national tribute to Robert Badinter, a “wise man” and a “republican conscience”, who died last week at the age of 95. The ceremony will take place on Place Vendôme, headquarters of the Ministry of Justice where the former Minister of Justice brought the abolition of the death penalty.
The head of state promised to express himself, in his speech, on a possible entry of the lawyer into the Pantheon, this republican temple which proclaims on its pediment "To great men, the grateful homeland".
And Robert Badinter was indeed "a great man", the president agreed on Friday after the announcement of the death of the former Minister of Justice. But “these things take time,” he stressed.
The first secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure officially made the request to the Head of State, in a letter revealed by the newspaper Libération.
Barely elected president, Emmanuel Macron announced in 2017 the pantheonization of former minister Simone Veil in the tribute paid to her after her death.
The Élysée, in consultation with the family, chose a symbolic and unique place to pay tribute to the memory of Robert Badinter during a ceremony open to the public: Place Vendôme, in front of the chancellery.
It was there that the Minister of Justice of the socialist president François Mitterrand introduced the law of October 9, 1981 abolishing the death penalty, in a France then mainly in favor of the supreme punishment.
He subsequently worked for the universal abolition of capital punishment, a fight that Emmanuel Macron today says he wants to perpetuate, by hosting the next world congress of this cause in 2026 in France.
LFI persona non grata
But Wednesday's solemn meeting will take place against a backdrop of controversy. The philosopher Élisabeth Badinter, his widow, has in fact expressed the wish that the elected representatives of the National Rally and La France insoumise do not come to the ceremony, we learned on Tuesday from a source close to the matter.
“We will not be present, the family did not wish it. I am not going to argue,” immediately responded Marine Le Pen who, like other far-right leaders, had stuck to the service minimum to salute this figure long reviled for having abolished the death penalty.
Reverse reaction for LFI. “A national tribute is a national tribute. We are invited, and we will be represented there,” affirmed the parliamentary group, which will send its deputies Caroline Fiat and Éric Coquerel to Place Vendôme.
Badinter: a national tribute from which a part of the French are excluded is no longer a national tribute. The Republic is one and indivisible.
— Jean-Luc Mélenchon (@JLMelenchon) February 13, 2024
The radical left party and its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon were full of praise for Robert Badinter.
A slayer of extremes like her husband, Élisabeth Badinter has always fought the National Front then the RN, but has also more recently denounced a certain "Islamo-leftism" and pointed out the "enormous" responsibility of LFI in the rise of anti-Semitism in France.
Also read: Robert Badinter, a life marked by the fight against anti-Semitism
Robert Badinter, born into a Jewish family that emigrated from Bessarabia (now Moldova), witnessed his father's arrest in Lyon during the Second World War. He died during deportation to Poland.
His fight against the death penalty began on the morning of November 28, 1972: one of his clients, Roger Bontems, an accomplice in a deadly hostage-taking, had just been guillotined.
“I swore to myself, when leaving the Health Court that morning at dawn, that all my life I would fight the death penalty,” he told AFP in 2021.
On Friday, the Head of State saluted "this lawyer of character and profession who fought his life for the Enlightenment, for justice, for France, which was for him three times the name of his ideal".
"As a lawyer, he approached the reprobate, the accused and the condemned, with the same ardent thirst for justice. Keeper of the Seals, he abolished the death penalty and worked for the renovation of our judicial authority. President of the Constitutional Council, he was the guardian of the laws in all their force and grandeur", he listed, evoking "a wise man beyond his duties".
With AFP
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