"Louis XVI, you have been beheaded. Macron, we can start again. These remarks, chanted Sunday during a surprise demonstration at the initiative of La France insoumise, have created controversy. One of its declamators, Christophe Prudhomme, is indeed an elected official.
🗣 "Louis XVI, we beheaded him, Macron, we can start again"
➡ The slogan chanted by the elected Christophe Prudhomme (LFI), during the demonstration this Sunday in front of the headquarters of Renaissance pic.twitter.com/SQDxRKfsY8
— BFMTV (@BFMTV) May 7, 2023
A video obtained by BFMTV shows the regional councillor Île-de-France related LFI, tricolor scarf on the jacket, singing this slogan among the other demonstrators who were gathered in front of the headquarters of the Renaissance party in Paris.
I strongly condemn the comments of the LFI regional councillor for Île-de-France Christophe Prudhomme. This call for violence and hatred against the President of the Republic is intolerable and dishonours his mandate as regional councillor. https://t.co/LkUQhOURr4
— Valérie Pécresse (@vpecresse) May 8, 2023
The sequence caused a strong reaction. The president (LR) of the Île-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse, condemned "firmly" this Monday morning "this call to violence and hatred against the president", which "dishonors" the "mandate of regional councilor" of Christophe Prudhomme.
"Kind of catharsis"
Will the elected official be sanctioned? Vincent Jeanbrun, president of the Île-de-France Rréunis group (right and centre), majority in the regional council, pleads in this direction. "At our next sitting, I will ask that our assembly be able to take a sanction against him. In Île-de-France, we fight violence and we respect ALL elected officials," he wrote on Twitter.
Questioned on BFMTV this Monday, the main interested explained that it was a "kind of catharsis". "I prefer that anger be expressed verbally," justified Christophe Prudhomme, saying that it was not "the man who was attacked, but the function". "We have the right, today, I think, to express our anger. It's symbolic, it's political," added the elected official, who is also a CGT Santé national delegate.
