The time is now for convictions, Sunday, March 27. While far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen (RN) has been seriously rowdy Saturday night in Guadeloupe, the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron said he was “shocked” by the scene this Sunday. Franceinfo looks back on what happened.
An action by Guadeloupean nationalist activists
Traveling to Guadeloupe for 24 hours, the RN presidential candidate was the target of demonstrators on Saturday, awhen she recorded a duplex at her hotel in Le Gosier for the France 3 program “Sunday in politics”.
After ten minutes of interview, “Activists from several nationalist organizations in Guadeloupe” including the National Alliance Guadeloupe (ANG) have invested the premises, report our colleagues from Guadeloupe 1st, causing the interruption of the recording. “Twenty far-left demonstrators jostled us quite violently”, Marine Le Pen’s entourage told AFP. His press officer specified that he had received “a kick in the back”. They also have “snatched the microphone” what the candidate was wearing.
On the images, we can distinguish a security guard who protects the candidate from a person who tries to kick her, while she lowers her head. Marine Le Pen was then evacuated from the set. The interview for Guadeloupe 1ère, scheduled live at 7:30 p.m. local time, has been canceled. “There were no real clashes or violence but rather intimidation vis-à-vis Marine Le Pen”, reported the journalist from Guadeloupe 1ère present on the spot.
Marine Le Pen heckled and jostled in Guadeloupe
#franceinfo channel 27 pic.twitter.com/0u7HmtaAA4
— franceinfo plus (@franceinfoplus) March 27, 2022
The demonstrators, who chanted “The pen outside”, “The pen racist” according to other images, shot by BFMTV, left the premises on their own, the hotel management told AFP. One of these demonstrators, Laurence Maquiaba, of the National Alliance Guadeloupe (ANG), explained to the AFP to have wanted “to prevent” that Marine Le Pen’s message is not “widespread”. “The Guadeloupeans, despite the skilfully orchestrated welcome, do not want this person (…) and a party that has not changed at all”, she added. “We find it inadmissible that far-right ideas can roam like that, (…) quietly on this land which has been all the same a land of slavery, this land which (…) was the victim of the ideological ancestors of Marine Le Pen and Dupont-Aignan”, explained Ronald Selbonne, another ANG protester.
A complaint lodged
Marine Le Pen and all of her team are filing a complaint, her entourage told franceinfo this Sunday morning, “after the eruption of about twenty far-left demonstrators”. “The hotel was absolutely unprotected and the police took more than an hour to arrive”, laments a member of the campaign team. This is the first time that the politician has gone as a presidential candidate to the West Indies. His father had been prevented from entering Martinique in 1987.
Condemnations of the political class
Guest of “Sunday in politics” of France 3 broadcast this Sunday at midday, thehe outgoing President Emmanuel Macron said to himself “shocked” of this taking part and “sentenced” a scene “absolutely unacceptable”. “I fight the ideas of Mrs Le Pen, but with respect”, he added.
️ “It shocks me and I condemn them with the greatest firmness”
Guest of “Sunday in politics” on France 3, Emmanuel Macron returned to the incidents during an interview with Marine Le Pen in Guadeloupe#DimPol pic.twitter.com/B51w29HEMb
— franceinfo plus (@franceinfoplus) March 27, 2022
Interviewed on BFMTV, RN deputy Sébastien Chenu questioned the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, whom he accuses of not “obviously not being concerned about the security of this hotel”. The chosen one ensures that “we are trying, somewhere in France, to silence it”.
In a press release published this Sunday, the Overseas department of France Télévisions condemns these events “who prevented the interview from taking place” and regret “that the conditions of equality of expression of the candidates could not be applied in accordance with the rules imposed by Arcom within the framework of the electoral campaign for the presidential election”.
A disrupted end to the visit
The Sunday program of the RN candidate for her trip to Guadeloupe was also disrupted. The candidate canceled her appearance on RCI radio on Sunday morning, but was to hold a press conference at noon (6 p.m. in Paris). Passed briefly to the Sainte-Anne market, the president of the National Rally was again arrested by demonstrators treating her once again of “racist, facho!” according to several journalists present on the spot.