Several political leaders on the left, including manual leaders of Bompard and Marine Mourdier, have insurgents, in the name of secularism, of the government’s decision to put the flags in medium mast in public buildings on Saturday, April 26, the day of Pope Francis’s funeral.
Quite weird, while the left is currently divided on the issue of secularism, criticisms have been quite unanimous.
“I am quite surprised by the fact that we put the flags in a mast in public buildings. Laïcité is a concept that, however, is already white through when it comes to Islam and, in particular, Muslim women. We are there in a double insufficient standard,” Marine Tondelier’s patron was told.
Fabien Roussel, dissonant voice to the left
“In a secular republic, we do not put the flags in a mast medium because of the death of a religious personality. And no, we do not do it with each death of a head of state,” the France coordinator of Insoumise, Manuel Bompard, denounced it.
“It is a failure to put the flags for the death of the Pope. A guilt for all the teachers who will have to row to explain the neutrality of the state inherent in secularism,” said the socialist deputy Jérôme Groedj, national secretary of the secularism of the party.
“France is a secular republic and I am not in favor of the flags getting in half a mast for the disappearance of a religious authority,” the deputy thundered for the ecological group and the former rebel Alexis Corbière.
The only slightly dissonant voice to the left, the head of the French Communist Party Fabien Roussel refused Wednesday morning during an interview in France Inter to feed the controversy. “I understand that it is torn. But, frankly, there are other issues that we have to escape today,” he said.
“After the death of Pope Francis, the Government decided that the flags will have to be put in medium mast in public buildings on the day of their solemn funeral,” Matignon said on Tuesday.
In 2005, the year of the 100 years of the Law of 1905 on the secularism that acts for the separation of the Church and the State in France, the left had already criticized the decision of the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin to put the flags at half males after the death of Pope John Paul II.
Source: BFM TV
