Resignation from Bayou: slander, slander, there will always be something left!

Emmanuelle Ducros 8:54 a.m., April 3, 2024

Rififi among the Greens. MP Julien Bayou slammed the door, both from the EELV party and from the Ecologists group where he sits as a deputy for Paris.

Episode of a soap opera that has been going on for months. The former national secretary of the party was pushed out, this time, by a complaint from his former campaign, the activist from Nous tous.org, Anaïs Leleux, who accused him of “moral harassment” and “abuse of weakness ". He saved his seat after a vote by other Green MPs. But EELV members began a “militant strike” this weekend as a sign of protest. In the middle of the European campaign, a disaster, he had to leave.

It's the second time.

In September 2022, then co-president of the group in the Assembly Julien Bayou had already had to withdraw after the first accusations from the same woman, transmitted to the internal unit on sexist and sexual violence. It had never been further. No complaints, not even testimony before the cell. But he was never reinstated.

We can be really surprised at the way this story is handled.

Yes. It is the reign of rumor and arbitrariness. There is no conviction in court, not even an open official investigation, nothing, apart from the Greens' petty cooking around a private affair and a visibly ugly breakup. But denunciation equals guilt.

EELV is entangled in his hunt for sexist wizards and must find proof. Marine Tondelier, the national secretary, assures that she has “received new testimonies of “inappropriate behavior”. She commissioned an independent firm to gather facts, the beginning of which we do not yet have. We invite people who have things to criticize Julien Bayou to do so. Stalinist trial atmosphere. “We know he’s a bastard, help us prove it.” It's frightening.

Julien Bayou doesn't see it that way.

My Opinion colleague Antoine Oberdorff obtained the message that Julien Bayou sent to the management of EELV. He mentions defamation, “a call for denunciation” which designates him as guilty and which discredits him. Everything is done backwards in this story.

A dangerous story for EELV.

We always know where the courts of gossip begin, where hearsay replaces the law. The boomerang always returns to the faces of those who threw it. They will one day be reproached for inappropriate words or hurtful attitudes, real or imaginary, in this party of the eternally offended. All EELV does is move from one excess to another. Transforming a party where women have actually been victims of sexism, into a party where men are under the threat of rumor... We have the impression that they never learn from their mistakes. Political immaturity risks paying a very high price.