Despite the speed of the legislative campaign, the last few weeks have been marked by a surge in violence against aspiring MPs and their teams. Invited on BFMTV and RMC this Friday, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin returned to recent attacks, two days after the violent attack on government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot.
“We already have 51 candidates, substitutes or activists who have been physically attacked,” he stressed, referring to attacks that are “sometimes extremely serious, which lead people to hospital.” The Minister of the Interior denounced a “climate of great violence towards politics and what it represents.”
“More than thirty arrests” have already taken place and the police “are taking complaints immediately,” according to him. “It is very important that democracy is preserved,” “I hope that there will be the strongest condemnations,” insists the minister, himself a candidate in the 10th constituency of the North where he came out on top on Sunday and who plans to leave the government after the election.
As for the attackers, it is still “too early to draw up a typical profile,” he explains, referring to “extremely varied profiles,” between attackers who are “spontaneously angry” and “political activists, or from the far left and far right.” No political tendency has emerged at this stage among the perpetrators of these acts, the attacks having affected “all sides.”
“Overflows” feared in Paris, Lyon, Rennes and Nantes
“There were RN candidates who were violently attacked, left-wing candidates who were violently attacked, a minister, Prisca Thevenot, violently attacked, so I think unfortunately that it is very shared,” he continued.
“We must fear excesses on Sunday,” the minister continued, explaining that he had asked the Paris police chief to ban gatherings planned for 8 p.m. Sunday evening in front of the National Assembly, “excesses that probably come more from the far left.” He also anticipates “other possible excesses” elsewhere in the capital, “but also in Lyon, Rennes, Nantes, where there are pockets of the far right or far left.”
He recalled that “30,000 police officers and gendarmes” would be mobilized that evening, “including 5,000 for Paris and its suburbs”, forces deployed “for as long as it takes”. “If we have to hold out for two or three more days, we will hold out”, assured the minister.
Gérald Darmanin also indicated that he was ready to “stay a few more days to form a government” after the legislative elections, “if the President of the Republic asks me to do so”. On the other hand, he considered that if the RN comes out on top, whether its majority is relative or absolute, it will have to form a government, while the party requires an absolute majority to take power. “This is the counterpart of winning an election. Those who win must govern”, he insisted.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings