After the broadcast of an investigation by the magazine “Special Envoy” in which several women accuse the former minister Nicolas Hulot of sexual assault, Elise Lucet received Laurence Rossignol in particular. The vice-president of the Senate is a signatory of a forum for a #MeTooPolitique. With almost 300 other personalities, she demands that the perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence be removed from political life.
“I think it is important that in the political world, men realize that it is a stain on all politics, and on their political formations, to protect, as they have done too often, authors of sexual violence. “
Laurence Rossignol, PS senatorin “Special Envoy”
Senator PS explained how “the case of 2018” has been “a real break“for her. It was on this date that the magazine Ebdo, the first rape accusations against Nicolas Hulot, then Minister of the Ecological Transition. The government had expressed its support, and the Secretary of State then in charge of equality between men and women Marlène Schiappa took his defense in a forum. “It is a deep wound to see an entire government claiming to do [des violences faites aux femmes] the great cause of the quinquennium supporting a man implicated in a rape case “, judge Laurence Rossignol. Even if the facts were prescribed, she adds, “to support as it was done, it was either to say that the victims were lying, while we were fighting for the credibility of the victims’ words, or to say that even if it was true, it did not matter. And that the Secretary of State was to guarantee this political enterprise was, for me, really an injury.“
“Not worthy of being a representative of the people”
With this #MeTooPolitique movement, she explains, it is about bringing this question to all political parties: are you ready to invest again men who have been implicated in this type of business? In such cases, the Senator recommends that the investiture be possible only after internal investigation. In the Socialist Party, she explains, during the investitures for the municipal elections in 2020, a commission of inquiry was appointed to study two problematic files. After hearing the various parties, the commission concluded that the investiture was not possible.
And to cite the case of a deputy implicated for acts of harassment on his spouse (heavy facts, specifies Laurence Rossignol, the spouse subject to a protection order), for which the judgment will not be pronounced until after the investitures. “I hope that no one will invest this man, for whom the prosecution had requested the lifting of parliamentary immunity: he is not worthy of being a representative of the people.”
Extract from the debate which followed the broadcast of the investigation of “Special Envoy” “Nicolas Hulot: women accuse”, November 25, 2021.
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