Tense debate in the National Assembly over French President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular pension reform. The insults, the fights, the disciplinary sanctions and the accusations of parliamentary obstruction are the order of the day in the appearances in the Lower House, in an unusual image in the politics of the neighboring country that has forced different representatives of the Government to call for calm and to recover diplomatic manners in the chamber. The tension shoots up when, precisely, the French Executive has just received its first setback to the project. The Assembly rejected this past morning the article referring to the creation of an employment registry in companies for the elderly, with 256 votes against, 203 in favor and 8 abstentions.
Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne has called for a serene debate on the pension reform. “The National Assembly should be the site of debate, not of insults,” recalls Borne on Twitter, who considers that “those who insult are not up to the French who have elected them or the democratic debate they expect.” “It is still not too late to withdraw the blocking amendments allowing a true substantive dialogue” in order to have “a frank debate, but never insulting” and “to renounce excesses,” Borne said during the control session. to the government.
The deputy of La France Unsoumisa, Aurélien Saintoul, has been sanctioned by the National Assembly, after he called the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, a “murderer” and an “impostor”, in the midst of a debate on the pension reform. The insults have created a lot of commotion in the chamber and on Monday, for example, they caused the temporary suspension of the session. “I have always considered that violence, be it physical, verbal or symbolic, has no place in political life,” Dussopt said.
The far-right leader Marine Le Pen has also lamented “the verbal escalation” in recent days. “In politics, we don’t have enemies, we have adversaries,” she said, trying to give a more moderate image than that offered by La Francia Insumisa, the equivalent of Podemos in France. Last Friday, without going any further, another deputy from La Francia Insumisa, Thomas Portes, was penalized for tweeting a photograph of himself with his foot on top of a ball with the face of the Labor Minister, as if his head had been cut off. “Mr. Minister Olivier Dussopt, withdraw your pension reform,” wrote Portes, who was wearing the tricolor band of deputies when the photo was taken.
The Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, considers that the photograph is “an unacceptable, degrading staging and an explicit call to hatred and violence.” “The Assembly is not a circus and wearing the tricolor band requires dignity and seriousness,” Christian Demuynck, conservative mayor of Neuilly-Plaisance, also reacted. Portes has been excluded for 15 days from the chamber and deprived, for two months, of half of his parliamentary salary. This is the harshest sanction provided for in the regulations of the National Assembly.
«I will always be a guarantor of the democratic debate. I will not let anything pass, “warned the president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, who considered that” there are lines that cannot be crossed. According to her, what the French expect of the deputies is “an Assembly that works, debates and votes.” In this sense, the president accused La Francia Insumisa of making a “parliamentary guerrilla” and demanded a massive withdrawal of amendments so that the deputies could discuss and vote on the text of the pension reform.
“We really want there to be a democratic debate on this text, that we can discuss argument against argument, project against project,” said Borne. The prime minister also demands “a withdrawal of the amendments that has no other objective than to obstruct and delay the progress of the text” and an end to the “invective” in the National Assembly.
The alliance of left-wing parties (Nupes), to which La Francia Insuimisa belongs, already withdrew 1,000 amendments on Monday night to “advance” the dialogue, but Braun-Pivet considers that it should withdraw another 9,000 to allow parliamentary debate . And even so, there are still 14,000 amendments to examine, most of them from La Francia Insumisa. At this rate, it seems difficult for the parties to examine the controversial article 7 of the pension reform, the heart of all the regulations. If approved, it would progressively raise the minimum retirement age in France from 62 today to 64 in 2030.
The deputies have until Friday at midnight to examine the text in first reading. If then the debates have not concluded in the National Assembly, the draft will go to the Senate.
new protests
The climate in Parliament begins to be similar to that of the street. The unions have organized for tomorrow, Thursday, new protests against the pension reform. Its objective is to put pressure on the Government to withdraw this regulation. The first two mobilizations brought together 1.2 million and 2 million citizens, respectively, throughout the country. The third, held last week, had a minor impact. Other protests are already planned for March 7 and 8, after the return of the February school holidays.
#Murderer #impostor #insults #French #parliamentarians #exchange #Basque #Newspaper