As part of the national tribute to Robert Badinter, who died last week at the age of 95, Emmanuel Macron announced this Wednesday, February 14, the entry into the Pantheon of the father of the abolition of the death penalty in France.
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The French Republic in mourning. This Wednesday, February 14, Emmanuel Macron presided over a national tribute to Robert Badinter, a “wise man” and a “republican conscience”, who died last week at the age of 95. The ceremony took place in Place Vendôme, headquarters of the Ministry of Justice, where the former Minister of Justice carried out the abolition of the death penalty.
“His name must be inscribed” in the Pantheon, “alongside those who have done so much for human progress and for France,” declared the head of state at the conclusion of his speech, in which he praised Robert Badinter as “a force that lives and snatches life from the hands of death.”
“To the great men, the country is grateful,” the Pantheon proclaims on its façade. And Robert Badinter was truly “a great man,” the president agreed last 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, had officially made the request to the head of state, in a letter revealed by the newspaper 'Libération'.
As soon as he was elected president, Emmanuel Macron announced in 2017 the pantheonization of former minister Simone Veil after the tribute paid to her after her death.
The Elysée, in consultation with the family, chose a symbolic and unprecedented place to pay tribute to the memory of Robert Badinter in 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 promulgated the law of October 9, 1981 that abolished the death penalty, in a France then largely in favor of the maximum punishment.
Subsequently, he became involved in the universal abolition of the death penalty, a fight that Emmanuel Macron says he wants to perpetuate today, by hosting the next world congress for this cause in France in 2026.
Divided positions within the parties
But Wednesday's solemn meeting took place amid controversy. The philosopher Élisabeth Badinter, her widow, expressed the wish that the members of the National Rally and France Insoumise not attend the ceremony, according to a source close to the matter on Tuesday.
“We will not be present, the family has not wanted it. I will not enter into controversy,” Marine Le Pen immediately responded, who, like other far-right leaders, limited herself to the minimum necessary to pay tribute to this figure for a long time. denigrated for having abolished the death penalty.
France Insoumise had the opposite reaction. “A national tribute is a national tribute. We are invited and we will be represented,” said the parliamentary group, which sent its deputies Caroline Fiat and Éric Coquerel to Place Vendôme.
The radical left party and its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon did not spare praise for Robert Badinter.
Like her husband, Élisabeth Badinter has always been a detractor of the National Front and then of the National Rally, but she has also more recently denounced a certain “Islamo-leftism” and has pointed out the “enormous” responsibility of France Insoumise in the increase in anti-Semitism in France.
Robert Badinter, born into a Jewish family emigrated from Bessarabia (present-day Moldova), witnessed his father's arrest in Lyon during World War II. He died deported in Poland.
His fight against the death penalty finds its origin on the morning of November 28, 1972: one of his clients, Roger Bontems, an accomplice in a deadly hostage situation, has just been guillotined.
“I swore to myself, as I left the Health Court that morning at dawn, that I would fight against the death penalty all my life,” he told AFP in 2021.
On Friday, the head of state praised “this lawyer of character and profession who fought all his life for the Enlightenment, for Justice, for France.”
“As a lawyer, he stood on the side of the marginalized, the accused and the convicted, with that same burning thirst for justice. As Minister of Justice, he abolished the death penalty and worked for the renewal of our judicial authority. As President of the Council Constitutional was the guardian of the laws in all their strength and greatness,” he listed, evoking “a wise man beyond his functions.”
With AFP
This article was adapted from its original French version.
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