It will end the (false) suspense, Saturday, January 15. During a trip to Lyon, Christiane Taubira must lift the veil on her presidential ambitions, after announcing at the end of December that she planned to be a candidate “facing the impasse” of a left more than ever divided.
The former Keeper of the Seals had assured that she would not be “not one more candidate” and would put “all his strength in the last chances of the union”. In the absence of agreement from the candidates on the left to submit to the result of the popular primary, of which she is the only one to have accepted the principle, Christiane Taubira should indeed be the sixth candidate on the left. The opportunity for franceinfo to recall the positions and significant fights of the former Guyanese deputy.
His commitment to the independence of Guyana in the 1970s
Christiane Taubira was 26 when she entered the political arena. We are in 1978 and the professor of economics joins the Moguydé, the Guyanese decolonization movement. At its head, Roland Delannon who will later become her husband and the father of her four children. Christiane Taubira then discovers militancy and clandestinity. “Every two days, I had to change places, while carrying around a 2 month old baby. I took risks, my husband was in prison for a year and a half. My other comrades were imprisoned”, she testified in an interview with StreetPress.
In April 1993, a few days after being elected MP for Guyana, Christiane Taubira explains her fight for the independence of her birthplace. “I did not come to the National Assembly to defend [l’indépendance de la Guyane], she told journalist Jean-Pierre Elkabbach, but I’m not going to spit on my own fantasies. I cannot conceive of renouncing the very principle of sovereignty. To recognize that Guyana is geographically elsewhere than in Europe, that physically, culturally, historically, is something else, it is also to flirt with the idea of sovereignty.
His fight to have slavery recognized as a crime against humanity in 2001
The member of the first constituency of French Guiana speaks at the National Assembly podium: “This inscription in the law, this strong word, without ambiguity, this official and lasting word constitutes a symbolic reparation, the first, and undoubtedly the most powerful of all.” If her tone is so solemn, it is because the elected official is the rapporteur of the bill providing for the recognition of the slave trade and slavery as a crime against humanity. Its text, torn from hard struggle, was unanimously adopted on May 10, 2001.
Christiane Taubira savors this historic moment. “I had to tame my heart and my tears at the same time, to live up to this last stage, because it is not a personal step. I tried with dignity, with strength, with loyalty to make a request , a collective aspiration”, she said after the vote on France Télévisions. Since 2006, France has commemorated every May 10 the national day of memories of the slave trade, slavery and their abolition. This is the date of adoption by the Senate of the final text of the “Taubira law”.
His 2002 presidential candidacy
Neon lights in the colors of the French flag light up the Parisian scene. To applause, Christiane Taubira ascends the podium on December 1, 2001. “Words are usually my friends, today they seem to have left my head, and I take full measure of the confidence, the audacity, but above all the terrible challenge that we are going to take on together”, she shouts. the “terrible challenge”is his presidential candidacy. The elected official has just been appointed by 473 votes in favor against 102 by the members of the PRG (Radical Left Party). Christiane Taubira goes down in history: she is the first black woman, from overseas, to be a candidate for the Elysée.
The Guyanese MP is focusing her campaign around “the equality of chances” and some “solidarity for all”. In particular, she defends equality between men and women and wishes to establish the right to vote for foreigners in local elections. On April 21, 2002, it’s a shock. The left is eliminated in the first round. Lionel Jospin bows to Jean-Marie Le Pen who wins his ticket for the second round against Jacques Chirac. Christiane Taubira comes thirteenth with 2.32% of the vote. It is held, at the time, partly responsible for the failure of Lionel Jospin.
In an interview at Zadig in December 2020, Christiane Taubira defended herself, assuring that “If I had to do it again, I would do it again” and recalling the presence of other candidates who achieved higher scores than her. “All the same, as candidates on the left, there were, in addition to Jospin, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Noël Mamère, Robert Hue and me. And I would be the only one to have posed a problem, the only culprit, the only person responsible for defeat on the left? Maybe the only woman and maybe the wrong color”, she says. In 2017, Christiane Taubira returned to franceinfo on this painful defeat both physically and psychologically. “For five or six months, I slept two hours a night. The body resists, then it gives way afterwards”, she testified.
Her fight for marriage for all in 2013
“I must confess that I am overwhelmed with emotion.” We are April 23, 2013 in the hemicycle of the National Assembly. Christiane Taubira is about to speak one last time before the final vote on the law on marriage for all. “We must speak to those who have been hurt by words, by actions (…) those who have known disarray” facing a “sublimation of selfishness”, declares the Keeper of the Seals. Having become the spokesperson for homosexuals, reviled and insulted by part of the right, Christiane Taubira speaks to teenagers: “Keep your head up. You have nothing to reproach yourself for. We say it loud and clear, with a powerful voice!”
A few minutes later, after one hundred and thirty-six hours and forty-six minutes of debate, the vote finally took place: 331 votes, 225 against and 10 abstentions. Under the cries of “Equality! Equality! Equality!” Christiane Taubira can enjoy the moment. It was she who carried for many months in Parliament the opening of marriage to same-sex couples, François Hollande’s campaign promise.
This (second) Taubira law has turned a part of the French off while helping to make the Keeper of the Seals an icon for a fringe of the left. However, the text also disappointed some of its supporters who considered it incomplete, François Hollande’s promise to make PMA accessible to all women not included in it.
His resignation from the Valls government in 2016
The French flag flutters alongside the Algerian flag on a small table topped with a bouquet of white roses. “It’s a subject that is always in the news”, launches the journalist of channel 3 of the Algerian Radio. “Yes, but it’s a subject that will die out”, responds tit for tat Christiane Taubira, this December 22, 2015. The subject of which the Minister of Justice speaks is highly controversial. This is the extension of the forfeiture of nationality for dual nationals who commit terrorist acts.
According to the Keeper of the Seals, “this forfeiture of nationality on people born in France, who have belonged to the national community since their birth, poses a fundamental problem on a fundamental principle which is ius soli, to which I am deeply attached, and which is, in the history of the construction of the French community on a civic basis, a fundamental pillar”. It also ensures that the project which must be presented the next day in the Council of Ministers does not retain the provision.
The proposal is however well in the project of constitutional reform and the Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, disavows his Keeper of the Seals. At the beginning of January, she reaffirmed on iTélé her opposition to this measure, believing that we “touches an important pillar”. Yet it is she who must bring this constitutional revision to Parliament. On January 27, his balancing act ends. Christiane Taubira tenders her resignation and, in the process, tweets: “Sometimes to resist is to stay, sometimes to resist is to leave. Out of loyalty to oneself, to us. For the last word in ethics and law”.
Ironically, there was ultimately no revision of the Constitution to include the principle of forfeiture of nationality aimed at perpetrators of terrorist acts. François Hollande gave it up, for lack of political consensus.