The domestic violence investigation against Adrien Quatennens continues to fuel the debate. And the Superior Council for Equality between Women and Men (HCE) will decide this Thursday: the political sphere must be “intransigent” against its officials involved in sexist or sexual violence, in a duty of “exemplarity”.
“People involved in violence have no place in the institutions that represent society,” this independent advisory body, attached to Matignon, said in a press release.
This position comes as La France Insoumise is mired in controversy over its reaction to questioning by its deputy from the North. The elected LFI, who admitted violence against his wife, is investigated, behind a railing.
In EELV, pressure is also increasing against Julien Bayou, accused of “moral violence” on his ex girlfriend. If the elected environmentalist withdraws from the group he co-chairs at the Palais Bourbon, several members of the EELV leadership demand that he step down as general secretary of the party.
“Send an independent body”
Without explicitly mentioning the Quatennes and Bayou cases, the HCE believes that “politicians, who exercise power, must be especially exemplary”, and “calls on institutions and political parties for intransigence” in terms of sexist and sexual violence .
The HCE also suggests “designating an independent body”, such as the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP), to monitor the situation of political figures “through the prism of (these) violence”, and this “before from the beginning of his term”.
Elected officials convicted of violence must be systematically punished with an “additional penalty of disqualification”, and political parties and institutions must establish “networks of referents against violence and surveillance cells”, adds the advisory body.
The left-wing parties and LREM already have a specialized body on the subject, each with a different operating mode. On the right as on the extreme right, currently nothing is planned to internally consider the words of victims who denounce acts of sexual violence.
Blind spot of violence against women
For its part, the Observatory of sexist and sexual violence in politics, an activist association feminist, considered necessary “the establishment of a clear and external treatment of the reports to the parties, articulated with the judicial system.”
If financial scandals such as the Cahuzac affair have pushed public authorities to act for the moralization of public life, on the other hand “no serious reform has been proposed” to respond to the scourge of violence against women, deplored this association in a statement posted on Twitter.
The Observatory calls on the government and the president of the National Assembly to “initiate a reflection at the highest level on the training of all political personnel on these issues.”
Source: BFM TV
