La France Insoumise is facing a case that has tainted the legislative campaign for a few days: the Taha Bouhafs scandal. On the BFMTV set on Sunday May 15, 2022, the regional councilor for Île-de-France LFI Clémentine Autain came to discuss the subject and the tone quickly rose with one of the channel’s journalists, Benjamin Duhamel.
Politics is a ring, its members know it well. After receiving powerful spikes from Rachida Dati during the election evening of the second round, Clémentine Autain, a figure of rebellious France, suffered the attacks when she came to explain her party’s position after the accusations of sexual assault against journalist and activist Taha Bouhafs who had run for the legislative elections – he then withdrew his candidacy.
Son of Nathalie Saint-Cricq and Patrice Duhamel, Benjamin Duhamel was fed up with politics. On the set of BFMTV, the journalist wonders about the fact that Clémentine Autain tweeted a message in support of Taha Bouhafs when he announced that he was not running for the legislative elections, when she knew that women had denounced, in the LFI commission, the acts of sexual violence of the young man of 25 years. The politician then replied:Are you talking to me here? Right in the eyes ? Are you saying to me that I concealed?Then she clarifies:I am the one who saw the victims, I am the one who participated with Mathilde Panot in the confrontation with Taha Bouhafs. In 48 hours we acted.“
While Benjamin Duhamel insists on the positioning of the executives of La France Insoumise at first, Clémentine Autain explains that she was not able to raise the question of the investigation earlier because the alleged victims did not want the case to become public: “The real reason, I have, at that time, not the right, in a certain way to say it.”
For his part, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who also supported Taha Bouhafs at first when he withdrew from the legislative elections by denouncing the attacks which he described as racist and marked by class contempt, claimed to have discovered the alleged facts of sexual assault in the media. He insisted on the fact that the voice of women is a priority.