Macron calls for Left to act on domestic violence

French president’s camp accuses opposition parties of playing down claims of assault by their leaders

PRESIDENT Emmanuel Macron’s camp has chastised the French Left for its handling of domestic violence scandals engulfing the opposition amid a row over whether cases involving politicians should be dealt with by their parties or the courts.

The past two weeks have seen two key political groups in France’s biggest parliamentary opposition alliance, Nupes, descend into infighting and recrimination over allegations of assault or harassment by their leaders.

The row began when prosecutors opened a preliminary inquiry after Adrien Quatennens, the de facto head of the Leftist France Unbowed party, officially called La France Insoumise (LFI), admitted slapping his wife during a row.

Party figurehead Jean-Luc Mélenchon infuriated feminists by praising his colleague for his “dignity and courage” while failing to mention Mr Quatennens’s wife. LFI MPs, self-styled champions of feminism and gender equality, closed ranks.

Julien Bayou, the leader of the Europe Ecology Greens party (EELV), resigned from his party over allegations that he had committed “psychological violence” against his ex-partner.

Mr Bayou came under pressure last week after fellow Green MP Sandrine Rousseau said on a television show that he had displayed “behaviour that causes women mental breakdowns”.

Criticising “Kafka on social networks”, Mr Bayou said an internal EELV committee investigating gender-based or sexual violence, and which had begun an inquiry into Mr Bayou in July, had refused to hear his side of the story.

The Macron camp broke their silence this week and waded into the row, accusing the two parties of either seeking to play down allegations or taking the law into their own hands.

First up was Eric Dupond-Moretti, the justice minister. Criticising what he called “private law justice”, he said: “The courts are the only place in a democracy where justice is handed out. Not in political circles and ad hoc good practice committees.

“All these monsters that escape any legal framework are in the process of devouring the very people who created them by violating our fundamental judicial principles,” he complained.

Fellow minister Marlène Schiappa then accused LFI’s internal investigations unit – which failed to look into the Quatennens affair – of “having a tendency to hush up” cases, while the Green party’s way of dealing with abuse allegations was “opaque”. She claimed: “We are not a party of rushed justice and Stalinist trials. We are not going to ape the justice system with false prosecutors, false judges and little hammers.”

She said Mr Macron’s Renaissance party’s own investigative unit would “learn from others’ mistakes and our own”. Ms Schiappa called for a “serious independent structure” that would either hand such testimonies to the party’s “conflicts commission”, which could opt to exclude a member, or, when appropriate, to the courts.

Specialists said handling sexual or gender-based abuse was a tricky issue for political parties in France.

“We have to walk a fine line,” said Laurence Rossignol, Socialist senator and former women’s rights minister. “We can’t just refer to the courts, not just because the justice system is slow but because we all know that only one in 10 rape cases ends in a conviction.”

She suggested that parties deal internally with such cases without waiting for a criminal conviction, as Mr Macron did when he fired Damien Abad , his solidarity minister who had been placed under investigation for rape.

The Greens this week suggested creating an independent body to look into allegations of abuse within French politics. That would have the advantage of “allowing women in parties where no such units exist to have a space to testify”, said Cyrielle Chatelain, ecologist parliament group leader.

Commentators, meanwhile, warned that while abuse must be stamped out, France could equally do without a self-appointed political morality police.