The Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti, at the National Assembly on May 18, 2012. – Jacques Witt / SIPA
By voting on Thursday for two government measures, one establishing a 30-year safety sentence for those sentenced to life imprisonment for a crime against a police officer or a gendarme, the other putting an end to reminders of the law, the deputies have muscular the bill of “confidence” in justice.
“To shoot a police officer is to shoot the Republic”, insisted the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti, presenting a series of amendments to limit the reductions in sentences of people convicted of crimes against the forces of the order.
According to him, these amendments “implement the commitments of the Prime Minister so that the police forces of our country are better protected” and send a “strong message”. The one on security sentences was filed on the day of the police demonstration, Wednesday.
“The call to the law is no longer useful, even ridiculing the authority of the State”
However, these measures gave rise to a new pass of arms between Mr. Dupond-Moretti and the Insoumis. “The preventive virtue of increasing the penalty, that does not exist,” said the deputy La France insoumise (LFI) Ugo Bernalicis.
“You are inconsistent. You are playing with fire by dint of wanting to walk on the flowerbeds of the far right, it is a crime under the pressure of factious demonstrations in front of the National Assembly, ”he said.
The Assembly also adopted another government amendment removing reminders of the law which “provoke a feeling of impunity both among the victims and among the perpetrators”, underlined Mr. Dupond-Moretti.
He referred the creation of an alternative to recalls to the law to future work by the General Inspectorate of Justice and the two chambers of Parliament, with a probable vote of a government amendment when the text passes through the Senate. “It is a question of canceling and of building”, promised the Minister of the Seals while the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, had declared Wednesday: “The reminder of the law is no longer useful, even ridicules the authority of the ‘State’.