Persona non grata. Sandrine Rousseau harshly judged Dominique Voynet’s return to the political arena. The former patron of ecologists, Lionel Jospin’s Environment Minister, was elected this Sunday number 1 of EELV in the Franche-Comté federation.
“A problem with her taking responsibility”
At issue: his testimony in 2019 during the defamation lawsuit brought by Denis Baupin against several elected environmentalists who had accused him of sexual harassment and violence.
“I have no problem with him returning to politics. I have a problem with her assuming responsibilities in politics”, judged the green deputy on Monday morning in the Public Senate.
In 2016, Sandrine Rousseau accused Denis Baupin, then a member of the National Assembly and an emerging figure in the Greens, of sexual assault. Fourteen women had testified against her, before the courts finally threw out the statute of limitations.
During the Baupin trial, Voynet had denounced “a social death”
The then deputy for Paris had filed a complaint for defamation against the women who accused him. In April 2019, he was convicted of abuse of process and had to pay 7,500 euros to each of the defendants.
Dominique Voynet had been questioned during her trial. Until now, she has been very discreet in this matter, she later advocated “rebalancing the scales a bit.” The former presidential candidate in 2002 said then that she was embarrassed by “the extremely caricatural portrait” of Denis Baupin produced by the press, according to her recounted Point.
“Did everyone know what? That he was flirtatious, that he had a fairly libertarian and sixty-eight culture? Yes, but I have never heard of coercion,” he then explained to the bar, who finished his career at the head of the Regional Agency for Health of Mayotte.
“A Political Act”
He had also described “a rather clumsy coquette, quite heavy”. “We treat him like a rapist. Was this quarry worth it, this social death without qualifying the facts?” added the environmentalist before the judges.
His support for Denis Baupin has lived on in environmental memory. Dominique Voynet had been removed from Yannick Jadot’s presidential campaign for this reason, according to information from the World.
“It is a political act to have done that against us (testifying against the women who accused Denis Baupin Editor’s note) (…). What we want? Are we a feminist party or are we not? I believe that today we must answer this question, “says Sandrine Rousseau again on Monday.
“I did not support Denis Baupin”
The ecofeminist is not the only one who does not appreciate the return of Dominique Voynet to politics. “Green with rage. Shame”, so wrote so in your Twitter account Charlotte Minvielle, former EELV candidate for the legislative elections of French residents abroad and head of the British section of the party. Others, on the contrary, congratulated him, like Anne Vignot, the ecologist mayor of Besançon.
The former Minister of the Environment defended herself.
“I did not support Denis Baupin. I was summoned to appear in a trial that he had initiated,” he explained, justifying his presence in the name of “the need for fair trials, instructed for and against”, on the France 3 antenna. Franche-Comté this Sunday.
“Activists left to fend for themselves”
“What was asked of me was to give testimony of what I had seen and heard and not of what I thought, on a personal level, of my relationship with Denis Baupin”, the ecologist further advances.
Adding: “I began my intervention in the trial by saying that I did not question the word of the women.”
Dominique Voynet says that his return is related to the atmosphere within his party, weakened after Yannick Jadot’s poor performance in the presidential elections, describing the activists as “quite sad” and “left to fend for themselves”.
A congress in the form of failure for Jadot and Rousseau
The return of the ex-elect comes when the party is still very divided, after the accusations of psychological violence presented by the ex-wife of Julien Bayou and transmitted by Sandrine Rousseau. The forty-year-old resigned from his position as national secretary at the end of September, although he denied the facts that are not clearly established.
The first round of the environmental congress this Saturday placed Marine Tondelier in the lead, well ahead of Sophie Bussière, the colt of the former candidate for the Élysée Palace, and Mélissa Camara, that of Sandrine Rousseau. What gives the feeling that the fans want to turn the page on the last few months.
Source: BFM TV
