The rebellious deputy Thomas Portes was expelled from the National Assembly on Friday after appearing with a soccer ball bearing the image of the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt to call for a withdrawal of the pension reform.
It has become a symbol around the pension reform: the soccer ball. It all started with a tweet published last Thursday by Thomas Portes, deputy La France insoumise (LFI), posing with his elected scarf, his foot on a ball bearing the image of the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt. The case provoked heated exchanges in the National Assembly on Friday and the exclusion of the parliamentarian from Seine-Saint-Denis for 15 days, the maximum sanction.
The rebellious are upwind against this decision. To the point that the movement as well as certain deputies now display a soccer ball in their Twitter biography in support of Thomas Portes. The main interested party has also taken up this approach. This act is part of a more global strategy, several elected officials of LFI having already displayed themselves with a balloon this Saturday during the demonstration against the pension reform.
Among them, there are very close to Jean-Luc Mélenchon like Sophia Chikirou or Antoine Léaument. Among the rebellious, the challenge is all the more lively as Thomas Portes is condemned to the maximum sanction provided for by the National Assembly, in the same way as Grégoire de Fournas.
“Commonalisation of racism”
The deputy of the National Rally (RN) was also excluded for 15 days last November after having launched “that he return to Africa”, during the intervention of a rebellious black parliamentarian, Carlos Martens Bilongo.
Guest of BFMTV this Sunday, Aurore Bergé did not distinguish between these two cases, believing that these parliamentarians “are to be sent back to back”. “You have on the one hand a far-right deputy who has a racist remark, and on the other a far-left deputy who assumes a violent and hateful political culture”, estimated the leader of the Macronist deputies.
In return, Manuel Bompard denounced a “trivialization of racism” on his Twitter account. “No, playing football with a ball bearing the image of a minister is not the same as a racist insult in the hemicycle,” wrote the LFI coordinator.
