Ministers walk out over ‘Nazi’ taunts

PRIME Minister François Fillon and government ministers walked out of the National Assembly after a left-wing MP compared Interior Minister Claude Guéant to the Nazis.

The walk-out happened after Serge Letchimy, an MP for Martinique, attacked Mr Guéant’s recent comments in which he said certain “civilisations” which stood for liberty, equality and fraternity were better than others which “accept tyranny and the subservience of women”.

Mr Letchimy said: “You bring us back day after day to these European ideologies which gave birth to the concentration camps”. He then asked whether the “Nazi regime” was also a “civilisation”.

The PM released a statement asking the Opposition to apologise, saying he “deplored the fact that [they] chose to resort to an indecent provocation during the question time session… there are comparisons which are shameful to those who make them. The sacrifice of the victims of the Second world War should not be wheeled out and sullied for self-interested reasons.”

Mr Letchimy, who belongs to the Socialist, Radical, Citizen and Miscellaneous Left parliamentary group (which includes the left-wing of the Socialist Party and some other movements), said he would make no public apology. He added Mr Guéant should make one instead.

Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande has refused to get involved, saying what he regretted was this “useless controversy, these harmful divisions…”

Centrist candidate François Bayrou, speaking on TF1 accused both sides of causing “an obscene escalation”.

“I think the Socialists are delighted there’s been a provocation, and the UMP, because their hope is that everyone will get tied up in the two camps’ debate.”

Photo: David Monniaux