EDITORIAL. Quatennens and Bayou back in the Assembly: two radically different situations

The rebellious Adrien Quatennens and the ecologist Julien Bayou reappeared in the Assembly. The first defends amendments during the debate on pension reform, to the applause of certain rebellious deputies, but to boos from the Renaissance group and from left-wing and environmental deputies. The second has recovered the right to speak in the media and at the Palais-Bourbon on behalf of the Green group, after having had to withdraw.

Basically, the two cases have nothing to do with each other. Adrien Quatennens is guilty. He was sentenced for domestic violence to a four-month suspended prison sentence and he admitted the facts. Julien Bayou is innocent. He is even the victim of a kind of slanderous denunciation against a background of political cabal since there is no complaint, no plaintiff, or even any potentially criminal fact that has been reported.

What these two cases have in common is the wreckage of political parties and their internal procedures. The Europe Ecologie-les Verts cell was not able to interview any alleged victim of psychological violence. This does not prevent MP Sandrine Rousseau from refusing to exonerate Julien Bayou and repeating that she will always support the “word of women”… even when they say nothing, therefore.
As for the similar cell of the rebels, it was useless. No more than the four-month suspension imposed on Adrien Quatennens, which did not prevent him from returning to sit and debate in the hemicycle.

Political Opportunity and Personal Ethics

Court decisions must prevail, always. Adrien Quatennens was sentenced because his wife filed a complaint in court, not in front of the cell of the unsubmissive. She probably did well, given the support given by Jean-Luc Mélenchon to her foal. As for Julien Bayou, he was the target of a political settling of accounts, but never targeted by justice.

In these two cases, the propensity of the rebellious and the Greens to assert their own justice, necessarily political, can be worrying. Because only the law and the decisions of the judicial institution count. Moreover, note that Adrien Quatennens was not sentenced to a sentence of ineligibility. He can therefore sit in the Assembly. The rest is a matter of political expediency and personal ethics.