Will Adrien Quatennens return to the National Assembly in the coming weeks? More than two months after he admitted to having slapped his wife, with whom the deputy is in the process of divorcing, his return to the Chamber has been discussed for several days on the benches of La France insoumise.
“In the group, everyone agrees that he should not be excluded from the group or asked to resign,” Mathilde Panot, the patron saint of the rebel deputies, said Tuesday morning during a press conference.
Coming out of his silence on Saturday
“Yes, he will return. We are discussing the terms of his return,” a party executive told BFMTV.com, even more directly.
Since his retirement from the position of party coordinator on September 18, the deputy from the North has not returned to the National Assembly. On sick leave in recent weeks, the elected official continued to vote by proxy while remaining silent. Until this Saturday when the 30-year-old expressed himself on his Twitter account when reacting to the collapse of two buildings in Lille.
The next day, he retweeted a post by Jean-Luc Mélenchon paying tribute to the victims of the November 13 attacks. Enough to send a very clear signal of his desire to return to the Palais-Bourbon while causing friction in his in-laws.
“It is a sensitive issue for him as well as for his teammates. We need to have an internal debate”, admits the deputy Clémentine Autain to the microphone of BFMTV.
Find the conditions of your return
Aware of the symbolic difficulty of the return of Adrien Quatennens in a party that wants to be very committed to the feminist struggle, the precise modalities of his return are considered. An employee of the movement mentioned to BFMTV.com a possible training against sexual violence.
“We are not going to tour France with schools to share their experience, but the idea has to go a bit towards that. Otherwise, it will not happen for many of us ”, also specifies a collaborator of the group.
With a background message: that of a possible reinsertion for those who “are not sentenced to life imprisonment”, according to the LFI deputy Manuel Bompard said this Tuesday morning on our antenna.
“Not without consequences” for LFI
One fear, however, is in everyone’s mind: that of a very bad media sequence. After a tweet of support from Jean-Luc Mélenchon to Adrien Quatennens, the movement had been supported by the opposition and Relève féministe, a group that had denounced in a forum policies of “masculine solidarity” that “protects the aggressors who swarm in our political spheres”.
“As an activist, we must show that this return cannot be without consequences. Is two months of withdrawal really enough, knowing that justice has not yet been pronounced?”, asks Marie Coquille-Chambel, one of its members.
Criticism had also been strong in his own camp, a first for a very loyalist party.
Proof that the equation is complicated: in front of the party headquarters, feminist slogans were posted on the night from Sunday to Monday – from “Quatennens, take your cliques and your slap” to “No aggressor in politics.” Without provoking an official reaction from the deputies.
“In my group we would not accept it”
Another stone in the shoe: the reaction of Nupes partners. Fabien Roussel, the head of the communists with whom relations have been tense for months, has expressed his disapproval of the return of Adrien Quatennens.
“The facts are serious and confessed. If he were in my group, we would not accept that a deputy who committed such acts return to our group,” the former presidential candidate launched into the BFMTV microphone.
On the ecologists’ benches, the discourse is more nuanced. The deputy from the North must “demonstrate to women, especially those who are mistreated, that their return to politics can serve to fight” in the fight against violence, Sandrine Rousseau judged this Sunday in France Inter.
Environmentalists, “not in a position to be intelligent”
The former candidate for the movement’s primaries has watered down her wine in recent weeks. In September, she asked Adrien Quatennens to “retire from all public speaking” “until the (judicial) investigation” is not complete.
Meanwhile, EELV has been implicated in its own handling of sexual and domestic violence cases, following the seizure by Julien Bayou’s former partner of the dedicated commission.
“I am in the situation of someone innocent of the facts of which he is not accused,” defended the ecologist in The worldafter resigning as head of EELV and spending a few days away from the media.
“It is true that we are not in a position to be clever even if the alleged facts have nothing to do with it. We tell ourselves that it is an LFI problem and that we do not have to get involved,” assumes an environmentalist deputy with BFMTV.com.
an unfavorable time
Last difficulty for the return of Adrien Quatennens: the calendar. The next few days will be marked by several meetings of high symbolic value, between the demonstration of the collective We all on November 19 and the international day of the fight against violence against women on November 25. Suffice it to say that the window of opportunity for a return to the National Assembly next week would have a negative effect.
His arrival at the end of November when the pension reform approaches – whose conclusions after consulting the social partners will be presented in December – is one of the privileged moments.
“Yes, he is a good speaker and knows the subject very well, but he is far from the only one,” says Mathilde Viot, a former adviser to the LFI group and co-founder of the Observatory on gender and sexual violence in politics.
According to her, “the question of competition cannot be used to justify the return of a violent man.” Adrien Quatennens has resumed exchanges with activists from her department in recent days.
Source: BFM TV
