It has become a symbol around pension reform: the soccer ball. It all started with a tweet published last Thursday by Thomas Portes, deputy for La France insoumise (LFI), posing with his elected scarf, his foot on a ball with the image of the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt. The case sparked heated exchanges in the National Assembly on Friday and the debarment of the Seine-Saint-Denis parliamentarian for 15 days, the maximum sanction.
The rebels are against this decision. To the point that both the movement and some deputies now show a soccer ball in their Twitter biography in support of Thomas Portes. The main stakeholder has also taken this approach. This act is part of a more global strategy, several LFI elected officials have already displayed a balloon this Saturday during the demonstration against the pension reform.
Among them, there are very close to Jean-Luc Mélenchon such as Sophia Chikirou or Antoine Léaument. Among the rebels, the challenge is all the more lively since Thomas Portes is sentenced to the maximum sanction provided for by the National Assembly, just like Grégoire de Fournas.
“Commonalization of racism”
The deputy of the National Group (RN) was also excluded for 15 days last November, after launching “to return to Africa”, during the intervention of a rebel black parliamentarian, Carlos Martens Bilongo.
BFMTV guest this Sunday, Aurore Bergé did not distinguish between these two cases, believing that these parliamentarians “are going to be sent back to back”. “On the one hand, you have a deputy from the extreme right who makes a racist comment, and on the other, a deputy from the extreme left who assumes a violent and hateful political culture,” estimated the leader of the Macronista deputies.
In return, Manuel Bompard denounced a “trivialization of racism” on his Twitter account. “No, playing football with a ball bearing the image of a minister is not the same as a racist insult in the chamber,” the LFI coordinator wrote.
Source: BFM TV
