The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, received a slap in the face on Tuesday from a man during a public ceremony in the department of Drome (east), an incident that resulted in the arrest of two people.
Macron, who is doing his “Tour de France of the territories”, has approached a group of people who were next to a fence, one of whom has attacked him after shouting “down with macronism”, according to a video that circulates in social networks.
Sources close to the investigation have confirmed in statements to the French television channel BFMTV that two people have been detained, without their identities or the reasons for the attack having been disclosed for the moment.
“Respect and calm”
The Valence prosecutor, Alex Perrin, has detailed that they are two 28-year-old men, including the attacker and one of his companions. Thus, it has said that none of them have antecedents, although it has stressed that this point will be subjected to a “complementary analysis”, according to the chain France Bleu.
Minutes later, Macron stressed that “the democratic path needs calm and respect from everyone, both political leaders and citizens”, as the French newspaper ‘Le Figaro’ has collected.
“In a democracy, the opposition can express itself freely in the streets, in the press and on television. He expresses himself regularly at the polls. The counterpart of this is the end of violence and hatred, “said the president.
In this sense, he stressed that “if hatred and violence return, they only weaken one thing, which is democracy.” “For this reason, I ask everyone for respect and calm,” stressed Macron.
For his part, the French Prime Minister, Jean Castex, has called for a “republican” position and has emphasized that “politics cannot in any case be violence, verbal aggression and much less physical aggression”. “We are all affected, it is on the pillars of our democracy,” he added.
The precedent of Valls
He is not the first French leader to suffer a similar incident. In 2017, Manuel Valls, aspiring to lead the French Socialists in the 2017 presidential elections and the country’s prime minister until a few dates before, was attacked in a campaign event. It happened in the town of Lamballe, in French Brittany, where a young man slapped him in the face after Valls greeted him.
It was the second incident of this type that Valls suffered in less than a month, after he was sprayed by a man with a sack of flour, then in the city of Strasbourg.
