La France insoumise (LFI) stepped up to the plate on Thursday, June 30, to defend the “insubordinate” deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis Eric Coquerel, who had just been elected chairman of the finance committee and faced with an intensification of rumors implicating his behavior towards women. Old rumors, but which have to date never given rise to public testimonies by women in their own name, and which had until then remained confined to social networks.
They crossed, Thursday, after his election to the National Assembly, a new media threshold, the feminist activist Rokhaya Diallo claiming on RTL to have “heard about the behavior he would have with women”. In a press release, LFI’s committee against gender-based and sexual violence issues a “clarification” in the face of “attacks on social networks raising suspicion about his behavior towards women”.
“Our committee has never received any report concerning the deputy Eric Coquerel, for any fact whatsoever, can we read. We remind you that our committee is always available to listen to women and receive their testimonies. But conversely, we deplore the circulation of rumors not based on any concrete evidence and having the sole effect of casting suspicion on a person. This type of practice does nothing to help effectively combat gender-based and sexual violence. »
Mathilde Panot and Clémentine Autain in support
The choice of the deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis as the candidate of the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) for the presidency of the finance committee had been contested, in particular by the Socialist Party (PS), which wanted to see the deputy Valérie Rabault chair the prestigious commission. Tuesday, during the meeting of the Nupes intergroup, the first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure, had raised the subject of these rumors.
LFI deputies Mathilde Panot, Clémentine Autain and Manuel Bompard assured him that no testimony had been collected to this effect within the movement. And the discussion was closed. However, several feminist activists have continued to relay doubts about her candidacy in recent times, without however providing new elements.
Ecologist Elen Debost, in particular, one of Denis Baupin’s accusers, wondered on Twitter: “Does anyone at the FI, or among the new and new deputies of Nupes, go consider multiple alerts? Others in the National Assembly have also asked themselves the question. Green MP Sandrine Rousseau claims to have looked for evidence likely to support these accusations as soon as the question of her candidacy arose, but to have collected nothing that could confirm them.
