A few hours before the end of the campaign, the climate remains electric in many cities. Thibaud Philipps, LR mayor of a town in the suburbs of Strasbourg, filed a complaint after being verbally assaulted and notably called a “collaborator” by people “sticking on street furniture” on Thursday evening, his office announced this Friday.
The elected official, who was leaving a meeting at around 11:45 p.m. on Thursday, first saw numerous collages made in his town of Illkirch-Graffenstaden (Bas-Rhin), before meeting five people “dressed in dark” who were “pasting on street furniture”, his office explained in a press release.
“I was returning from a public meeting around 11:30 p.m. when I saw that anti-RN posters had been stuck up all over the street furniture. The lampposts, the bus stops, even the flower pots,” the mayor told 20 Minutes, explaining that he then “came across five individuals aged around 25 to 35 who were putting them up.”
“It’s not possible to be insulted like that when you’re exercising your mandate.”
The councilor “contacted the individuals, inviting them to stop their illegal activity,” the document continues. After indicating his position as mayor, they “attacked him verbally in a violent and threatening manner.” “They notably told him that he had to prepare himself because he was part of collaborators and that they were going to come back for mow it “, added his office. “They said that I was an LR elected official, therefore that I was a collaborator, that I was on the wrong side of history,” the elected official also told 20 Minutes.
Thibaud Philipps filed a complaint for contempt of court and damage to property. “It is the office he represents that has been attacked and public property that has been damaged,” the press release accuses. Two people were arrested thanks to the intervention of the national police, according to the town of 27,000 inhabitants.
“I expect justice to be done now. It is not possible to be insulted like that when you are exercising your mandate. It is serious,” the elected official, who is also vice-president of the Grand Est region, insisted to 20 Minutes. “We are in a society where there are strong tensions, it is expressed without limits. If we want democracy to be respected, we must respect our functions,” he also reacted on France Bleu.
This new incident comes as Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced this Friday morning that “51 candidates or activists were physically attacked” during the campaign for the legislative elections, which ends this Friday at 11:59 p.m. He also specified, on BFMTV and RMC, that it was “a little early to make a typical profile” of the attackers, while mentioning the presence of “spontaneously angry people”, as well as “political activists, or ultra-left or ultra-right”.
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