The National Assembly voted for the exclusion for 15 days of the deputy LFI Thomas Portes, at the end of an afternoon on bottom of controversial tweet on the Minister of Labor.
Very eventful day in the hemicycle. This Friday, the debates on the pension reform were, for several hours, overshadowed by a controversy around a tweet from LFI deputy Thomas Portes, where he put his foot on a balloon bearing the image of the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt .
After long minutes of suspension of the session, the office of the National Assembly asked that Thomas Portes be excluded for 15 days from the hemicycle, that is to say the biggest possible sanction against a deputy. A request voted in stride by the deputies.
Renaissance and the RN headwind
When brought together for a disciplinary case, the office of the Assembly has four levels of sanctions. This ranges from a simple call to order to the fourth level which has been chosen: temporary exclusion for 15 days and a financial penalty depriving of half of the parliamentary allowance for two months.
Obviously, rebellious France did not want a sanction. For their part, the National Rally and Renaissance wanted the maximum sanction to be retained.
The Socialist Party and the environmental group wanted a sanction, unlike LFI, but not the maximum sanction: only a call to order. According to Cyrielle Chatelain, EELV deputy, if the RN asked for the maximum, it was to “clear themselves of the Fournas affair”, who had also been sanctioned last November after racist remarks.
When choosing the sanction to be defined against Thomas Portes, the Modem, a member of the presidential majority, had a less fixed and less harsh position than Renaissance, not necessarily wishing to go to a maximum position.
“Regrets” but no apologies
However, some Renaissance deputies are beginning to seem uncomfortable with the idea of putting Grégoire de Fournas and Thomas Portes on the same level.
“I am worried about the symbol returned and the consequences that this could have for the future. I wonder. Sanction: obviously! Maximum? I don’t know”, confided a deputy of the majority to BFMTV.
Facing the office of the Assembly, Thomas Portes used the term “regrets”, according to a source from Nupes. But he did not issue an official apology. Finally, the deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis conceded that he “should have taken off his deputy’s scarf for this photo”.
