An extract resurfaces and here is the controversy.
While he has just been nominated candidate in the 18th district of Paris under the banner of the New Popular Union, the former journalist Aymeric Caron finds himself strongly criticized on social networks.
In question: a controversial extract from a television interview on "C à vous" dating from 2017, rebroadcast on social networks, and in which he explains defending the idea of a "permit to vote".
Explanations.
What does the excerpt say?
In an excerpt from the program "C à vous" in 2017, notably relayed by a journalist from Le Figaro this Wednesday, we see the presenter Anne-Élisabeth Lemoine ask: "So you want to establish a license to vote, the uneducated citizen and irresponsible will no longer have a say?
It's a funny democracy that all the same!
Who decides who is educated and responsible enough to have the right to vote?
»
If you are a voter in the 18th district of Paris, you have been warned: in five years, idiots will no longer vote... since @CaronAymericoff only wants to leave the right to vote to those who have their "permit to vote" 🤷 ♂️ https://t.co/MBT5d36PCh pic.twitter.com/NbryckwrSX
— Paul Sugy (@PaulSugy) May 3, 2022
And the ex-columnist Aymeric Caron to answer: “Society.
Just like our society decides who can be a doctor, who can be a lawyer.
That is to say that we ourselves have created bodies, with sages, with the most informed people in each of these fields to give diplomas to each other.
Similarly, society decides who can drive a car.
»
Why this idea of the “permit to vote”?
This idea was initially defended in a work by Aymeric Caron, “Utopia XXI”, which he promoted on the set of Anne-Elisabeth Lemoine.
The book revisits the famous work "Utopia" by Thomas More.
It is in its pages that he imagines an “ecological, anti-speciesist, pacifist and united society”, that he imagines “the establishment of a license to vote”.
For the author, this license to vote should enable citizens to make them more responsible.
“It is embarrassing in a democracy that in a vote people can take part who sometimes have no knowledge of the stakes of the vote in question.
You can clearly see that for certain elections, if you go and ask people the question in the street, they do not know the names of the ministers.
They do not know the programs, they do not know the stakes of the questions”, he develops on “C à vous”.
The entire show is still available on YouTube, as Checknews points out.
Aymeric Caron imagines that this voting permit would be a "voting key", acquired at the end of a "MCQ which verifies that you have the knowledge, let's say basic, of mastery of the subject".
What are the reactions?
The excerpt has some elected officials and political commentators scolding.
" We walk on the head !
“, was indignant the senator ex-RN (who joined Reconquest!) Stéphane Ravier, who took the opportunity to tackle the absence of a union “of patriots” in the legislative elections to counter “the candidate mélenchoniste Aymeric Caron”.
“And why not a psychiatric expertise for certain candidates…”, quips MEP Gilbert Collard, also at Reconquête!.
For Florian Philippot, figure of the anti-sanitary pass protest, "this foul idea is perfectly in tune with the Macronist era, that of the Pass and social credit".
"Let's hunt these madmen!"
he thunders.
LFI candidate #AymericCaron wants to establish "a license to vote" against "uneducated and irresponsible citizens".
Who will decide?
We imagine him!
➡️ This terrible idea is perfectly in tune with the Macronist era, that of the Pass and social credit.
Let's hunt these fools!
pic.twitter.com/YBNuP9NFdV
— Florian Philippot (@f_philippot) May 4, 2022
What does Aymeric Caron say today?
More than four years after the broadcast of this excerpt, Aymeric Caron, who became a candidate in the legislative elections for the New Popular Union, says he has changed his mind.
“It is no longer relevant for me to defend this measure today,” he told Checknews.
“I carry the program of the Popular Union and I am committed to its measures.
I have personal positions, but I have set them aside, as is the case with many people in a political movement.
»
For him, there is anyway a “permit to vote but which is not called that”, “based on age”.
“The legislator believes that to vote, one must have a certain maturity, knowledge.
From the outset, the legislator laid down the principle that one must have a certain cultural thickness, a certain body of knowledge in order to be able to give an opinion on the orientations that one wants to give to this country.
But it's weird, we don't call it a license to vote.
I therefore proposed to review the voting permit, ”he argues.
