Under the golds of the Palais Bourbon, we only talked about that last week on the occasion of the return to parliament. For three weeks, the saga of sex scandals on the left has not ceased to make headlines, eclipsing practically all other news. Apparatus rivalries, scabrous revelations, parallel investigations and ad hoc tribunals, nothing seems to have to be avoided for these parties of the radical left, La France insoumise (LFI) and Europe Écologie les Verts (EELV), which had always champions in the fight against sexual assault.
These cases have taken on such a scale that the previous week the Minister of Justice, Éric Dupont-Moretti, came out of his hinges and thought it necessary to call everyone to order. “We are creating a private law justice system that makes absolutely no sense,” he said. […] It is deadly and deleterious for the great institutions that are ours and in particular for the justice system that I want to defend”.
It all started on September 14 when The chained Duck revealed that the wife of LFI deputy Adrien Quatennens had made a statement to the police on alleged acts of domestic violence. The news had the effect of a bomb. Especially since Adrien Quatennens was until very recently considered to be one of the presumed dolphins of the founder and undisputed leader of LFI, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
It took several days for the member for Lille to admit having given a slap to his wife, with whom he was in the process of divorcing, a year earlier. But the case would not have raised such a stir if, when the deputy was “withdrawing from the party”, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had not supported him by praising the “dignity” and the “courage” of his lieutenant. New outcry on the left where the leader was accused of minimizing domestic violence.
This did not prevent MP Manuel Bompard from maintaining that a slap could not be compared “to a man who beats his wife every day”. This case is the third to hit LFI in less than a year, after a complaint for sexual harassment brought against the chairman of the Finance Committee of the Assembly, Éric Coquerel, and an internal report for harassment and sexual violence against the ” militant journalist” Taha Bouhafs.
It is all the more embarrassing that, a few months earlier, LFI had shown itself intractable with regard to Emmanuel Macron by accusing him of having covered up his minister Damien Abad, accused of rape by four women. “At LFI, they did not understand the feminist wind in society. This is their first internal crisis,” said MP Sandrine Rousseau (EELV) who claims ecofeminism. By a curious combination of circumstances, it is she herself who will open the second chapter of this saga.
The hunt for a “runner”?
Guest on TV show It’s up to you to talk about the accusations against Adrien Quatennens, she took the opportunity to report the testimony of an ex-companion of the secretary general of her own party, Julien Bayou, according to whom his behavior would be “likely to break the moral health of women” with which he had relations. One of them even attempted suicide.
This second thunderclap on the left in less than two weeks immediately provoked the resignation of Julien Bayou from his post as secretary general of the Greens. And this, even if, according to journalist Patrick Cohen, Sandrine Rousseau admitted after the show that in this case nothing was “criminally reprehensible”. For his part, Julien Bayou evokes a simple “painful and difficult break”. His resignation is nevertheless deemed necessary “to send a signal” to women, said the vice-president of the group, Sandra Regol.
Unlike the previous one, this second affair takes place against a backdrop of political rivalry. In barely a month, the divergent currents led by Julien Bayou and Sandrine Rousseau should clash for control of the party. However, the ambitions of the one who narrowly lost the party primary a year ago are no secret. In the press as in the party, many suspect a settling of accounts.
But above all, the Bayou affair brings to light practices hitherto little known within the party. Thanks to a daily survey Releasewe will indeed learn that not only was a confidential complaint against Julien Bayou to be examined by the party’s Sexual Harassment Investigation Unit — a kind of internal tribunal — but that an informal group had been investigating his case for three years. sentimental life.
What do we blame him for? “His reputation as a ‘runner'”, confides to Release an anonymous source, and the fact that “he very often gets together with girls [femmes] fragile ones attracted by the light and honored to go out with him”. In the name of “sorority”, a WhatsApp group is created to discuss their intimate relationships. Emails signed “Les louves alpha” will be sent to relatives of Bayou in order, it is said, to “free speech”. At no time is anything other than psychological violence mentioned. Even if the principal concerned says he does not oppose these “investigations”, one of his former companions is not afraid to denounce “a campaign led by feminists to bring him down”.
Two different cases
“Wanderings”, “delirium”, the words do not seem strong enough to describe these inquisitorial methods which sow stupor in the party. “I consider that they [Les louves alpha] are not part of my party, ”said Green MP Karima Delli on BFM-TV. According to the editorialist of FigaroEugénie Bastié, these methods come from a feminist movement which believes that “the private is political” and which has decided “to solve the problem by way of the media court, immediate and without appeal, at the risk of sacrificing some innocent people”.
Many voices are calling for the Quatennens case to be distinguished from the Bayou case. If in the first case, we can consider that we are faced with a case of domestic violence (even if some dispute the extent of it), in the second we do not even know what Julien Bayou is accused of, writes Jonathan Bouchet-Petersen in Release. “It does not belong to a listening cell and even less to justice to interfere without limit in the psychological relations within a couple, he writes, as long as these are not imprinted with blows , sexual assault or criminally reprehensible moral harassment”.
One thing is certain, “the left is caught out on one of its most emblematic fights”, underlines the editorialist of the World. These fights in the mud are explained because they take place in “a party [EELV] brutally reduced to what it is: a fragile shell that […] remains prey to tenacious hatreds and unsavory settling of scores. », adds Françoise Fressoz.
“What would have happened if, all things being equal, Julien Bayou had been a woman? asks Peggy Sastre, columnist for the magazine Point. According to her, sexual freedom “does not come without risks and responsibilities. Unless we consider women as beings too fragile to assume them. »
For now, the only certainty is that the radical left has not finished suffering from these hiccups. According to an Odoxa and Backbone poll, 64% of French people believe that these cases have “discredited” left-wing parties. Earlier, the Jean-Jaurès foundation (left) had revealed that for the first time, it was La France insoumise and not the National Rally which was perceived as the most dangerous party for democracy.