The rebellious deputy Thomas Portes, excluded 15 days from the Assembly for a tweet targeting the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt, “assumes” his gesture and denounces “a disproportionate political sanction”.
Questioned this Saturday during the Parisian demonstration against the pension reform, the elected official, who no longer wears his tricolor scarf since his temporary exclusion on Friday, repeated that his message was “not a call to hatred” and “that if it had been misinterpreted by people (he) regretted it”. But, “I will redo the tweet if it had to be done again”, he added on BFMTV.
“A disproportionate punishment”
Thomas Portes was excluded for 15 days of sessions after having posted on social networks a photo where he posed, with his tricolor scarf, his foot resting on a ball bearing the effigy of Olivier Dussopt, bearer of the government project on the retreats to the Assembly.
“It is a disproportionate sanction, it is a political sanction which aims to prevent a vote by a deputy against the pension reform in the hemicycle”, denounced the elected representative of Seine-Saint-Denis. “If a deputy must be sanctioned for a political tweet, it is a very serious precedent which opens in this country”. The majority and the right are satisfied with the sanction.
Within the left alliance Nupes, even if the tweet was variously appreciated, it is however considered far too strong. Especially since this disciplinary measure, the most severe against a deputy, is the same as that pronounced in November against the deputy RN Grégoire de Fournas after his remarks deemed racist.
Hectic debates
What Thomas Portes did is not “the smartest thing we can do in the period”, noted the first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure, also present in the Parisian procession. “But finally, from there to wanting to sanction in this way and to consider that we can throw a smokescreen on the fight he is waging, the fight we are waging, there, there is a step that he cannot must not cross”.
Thomas Portes’ tweet was at the center of eruptive debates in the hemicycle on Friday, with a suspension of the session for several hours. Currently stopped at article 2, out of the 20 in the text, the deputies still have some 16,000 amendments to study until the deadline of February 17.