Judicial and political calendars frequently clash. During an election period, the phenomenon is all the more striking. The parties then find themselves having to decide, with in particular the risk of maintaining an elected official who will ultimately be condemned or of excluding a man or a woman who has been cleared.

The Republic in March, this year, had to do some housework and several outgoing deputies lost their investiture. We necessarily think of the deputy of Hérault Coralie Dubost, Macronist hope who left politics after being pinned for her fabulous expense reports and out of the nails. This is also the case of Pierre Cabaré, deputy for the first constituency of Haute-Garonne or Benoit Simian in Gironde. Both are accused of harassment by a former collaborator, the second is also accused by his wife. Stéphane Trompille was dismissed in Ain after being sentenced for sexual harassment in 2020. Same sentence, finally, for the former Secretary of State Nathalie Elimas, targeted by an investigation for moral harassment.

Case by case?

There are also counterexamples. The one who has been most talked about in recent days is Jérôme Peyrat, deputy of the Dordogne, sentenced to a suspended fine of 3,000 euros in September 2020 for acts of domestic violence. His investiture was denounced in particular by the Observatory of sexist and sexual violence in politics, a collective born in February in the wake of the movement

Today, he minimizes the scope of this conviction, assuring that the blow received by his wife during an argument in the car was not voluntary and recalls that his former companion was also convicted for malicious calls and messages. Contacted, Stanislas Guérini, the general delegate of En Marche, did not respond to our requests on the conditions of the nominations. No other figure in the majority has been able to tell us whether an official or unofficial rule applies in the matter.

Several candidates also seem to benefit from the line taken by Emmanuel Macron in July 2017, when he called for "an end to the permanent violation of the presumption of innocence", to defend Gérald Darmanin, then accused of rape. At least four other parliamentarians, including Thierry Solère, one of the strategists of the macronie, have thus been reinvested this year while they are the subject of prosecution, without for the moment having been convicted.