After 17 October, the State must restore order and the truth

Some sessions of questions to the government resemble a ritual, and others commit the State. This Tuesday, 20 October, belongs to the second category. Three days after a day of mobilisation that degenerated into violence and looting in several major cities, the Prime Minister had to answer both for public order and for the public word.

The facts

On Saturday 17 October, the mobilisation that started in high schools, which are demanding teacher replacements, resources and the renovation of buildings, brought together around 550,000 people according to the Interior Ministry, according to the figures published by L'Express. The peaceful marches were followed by clashes and looting, notably in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Lille and Limoges. A demonstrator died in Paris of cardiorespiratory arrest, according to the Paris police prefecture. The Justice Minister announced on Tuesday 123 people imprisoned and some fifty judicial investigations opened, AFP reports.

This afternoon, before the National Assembly, Sébastien Lecornu promised that the police deployment planned for the new day of action on Saturday 24 October would be "massive". He acknowledged, according to AFP, that the one on the 17th had been "too static" and "not mobile enough". Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced a revised doctrine in terms of numbers and responsiveness. According to i24NEWS, soldiers from Operation Sentinelle would be deployed on static guard missions in order to free up police and gendarmes. Localised curfews remain in force, in Lyon, Marseille, Lille and Paris. In the morning, the groups in the Assembly agreed on the creation of a commission of inquiry into the violence and policing, according to AFP.

A controversy over the role of intelligence

On top of this security issue comes a more serious question for our institutions. On Monday evening, Mediapart published written exchanges dated 18 October in which a territorial intelligence superintendent claims he was allegedly asked to write that La France insoumise was behind the movement. According to the website, this officer considered this assertion objectively false. The Interior Ministry denies having given any such instruction, and the Prime Minister replied in the chamber that these accusations were false.

It is unthinkable that a government could give such instructions. — Sébastien Lecornu, quoted by AFP

Other elements nevertheless call for caution regarding the attribution of the violence. Questioned on TF1, the Paris public prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said she could not confirm that the perpetrators of the violence in Paris were linked to the ultra-left, describing mostly people little known to the authorities, Blick reports. A police union official quoted by Mediapart estimates the ultra-left at around a fifth of the rioters. Conversely, a man known to belong to the ultra-left was arrested on Tuesday in the investigation into the arson of Limoges town hall, according to AFP. Manuel Bompard announced that he intended to refer the matter to the Court of Justice of the Republic.

The positions at stake

The government defends a clear line: organised groups planned the violence, and the Republic cannot tolerate small groups that threaten its institutions. It also maintains that LFI bears a moral and political responsibility, according to Sud Radio, because of the presence of its elected officials in the marches. This argument is not absurd: a political force that calls people onto the streets must care about what happens there. The President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, went as far as to suggest that the question of banning LFI could be raised, according to franceinfo.

The left, for its part, contests the designation of a culprit before the courts have established the facts, and points out that the anger of high school students rests on concrete demands. The unions are calling for a new day of action on 5 November. Even the CFDT, hardly suspected of radicalism, believes on France Inter, according to AFP, that the authorities are paying for ten years of top-down governance.

The analysis

Gaullism has always held two things together: the authority of the State and the impartiality of the State. The first requires protecting shops, town halls and people, and prosecuting rioters. On this point, there is no serious debate. The second requires the intelligence services to describe reality, and not what suits one side. If the exchanges published by Mediapart were to be confirmed, it would be a breach of the republican contract. If they were not, the government would have every interest in demonstrating it.

Considering a ban on a party represented in Parliament, in the midst of a crisis and before any judicial decision, seems to us to follow a dangerous logic. One does not fight the temptation of the street by closing the channels of representation.

What remains is the essential point, which the uproar risks erasing: high school students are asking for teachers in front of their classes and decent buildings. Policing will not answer that demand. A strong State is also a State that keeps its promises in its public services.

Conclusion

The parliamentary commission of inquiry is good news, provided it goes all the way. We propose that it be able to hear senior territorial intelligence officials and that the parliamentary intelligence delegation examine the notes produced around 17 October. And what if, at the same time, the government opened, as early as Wednesday, a real plan for high schools with the unions? Order is restored by public force. Trust, however, is restored only through truth and justice.

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence.