The Game of Discord. Even more than the World Cup in Qatar, a football match unleashes passions within the Hemicycle, to the point of pushing several deputies to want to boycott it: the charity match of the National Assembly team, planned this Wednesday evening. Organized for the benefit of the association “e-Enfance”, which fights against school bullying and cyberbullying, with the national number 3018, the meeting finds itself in a political storm.
Rebellious elected officials like Éric Coquerel, Ugo Bernalicis or David Guiraud believe that the RN wanted to “use this match to normalize”, according to a parliamentary source. They are therefore boycotting the match and intend to financially support the association directly. A decision assumed by the president of the LFI deputies, Mathilde Panot, at the end of a seminar of the Nupes. The PS has also abounded in the direction of the Insoumis.
The unanimous left, shared Renaissance
They “want to show that they have melted into the mass and that they are now parliamentarians like the others”, criticized the party’s first secretary Olivier Faure. “The challenge facing us, as we can clearly see with Italy, is that trivialization also leads to alliances between the right and the far right, this is how the far right can govern. We have no particular reason to use it as a stepladder, ”he said.
After the election of 89 deputies in June, “this is the first time that the RN has been invited to participate in a match of the Assembly team”, deplores for its part the socialist group in a press release, who also refuses to participate in the matches of the parliamentary rugby team “if the RN is present”. The movement even extended to the presidential majority, the patroness of the Renaissance deputies Aurore Bergé also recommended to her troops “not to participate in a match which will give rise to a ‘team photo'”, or “we do not don’t play on the same team. The opportunity for her to relaunch a “neither extreme right nor extreme left”, in passing.
“By telling you that I would not play, I am participating in the […] feeling that they are ostracized”
The composition of the team is therefore likely to give headaches to co-captain Karl Olive (Renaissance), who regretted that “LFI instrumentalizes and takes the match hostage. It will make people talk about the Rassemblement national even more”, he believes, when “we had the opportunity to offer a benevolent image of the Assembly”. This boycott “is stupid”, abounds the other captain, LR Pierre-Henri Dumont. “It’s a charity match” and “LFI said nothing when they played in the parliamentary XV with the RN Louis Aliot”, he insists, in reference to the rugby team which sometimes brought together Alexis Corbière and the Mayor of Perpignan.
Asked about Sud Radio, the Minister of Solidarity Jean-Christophe Combe also regretted this boycott which “makes the 89 deputies of the RN rather sympathetic today”. “I don’t play football, but I think it’s not the right way to fight the ideas of the RN”, it’s “a bad example, a bad fight to lead”, he continued. The government spokesman, Olivier Véran, recognized an “ambivalence” in boycotting this match: “By telling you that I would not play, I am participating in the phenomenon which consists in raising the feeling that they are ostracized, that they are victims of the system”, he developed on CNews.
At the RN, the deputy Julien Odoul denounces a “regrettable sectarianism” while “the cause is more important, for children victims of cyberbullying”. “It says a lot about these people in reality, it’s hatred all the time, everywhere, the fight all the time,” lamented on RTL Marine Le Pen. “In reality, they go against one of the great values of sport, which is that sport, precisely, is the place where you don’t do politics,” she added, convinced that the groups calling not to participate in this match will be “judged harshly by the French”.