Politics. "Total indecency," "Stalinist trial": the right and the MoDem outraged after Bayrou's hearing

The reactions were expected. Several MPs from the centre to the far right expressed their outrage on Thursday at the way in which Prime Minister François Bayrou was questioned the day before about his knowledge of the facts in the Bétharram affair , as part of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into violence in schools.

"I tend to give credence to the Prime Minister's public statements. On the other hand, this hearing made me quite uncomfortable because, for me, it looked more like a Moscow trial," said National Rally vice-president Sébastien Chenu on TF1 on Thursday.

"It's a shipwreck," he added, regretting the "exploitation of a tragedy (...) to stick a bullet in the Prime Minister and another in Catholic education." "It seems to me to be totally indecent," the far-right MP declared.

The Prime Minister maintained on Wednesday that he had received no further information other than from the press regarding the violence at the school, where several of his children attended. He blamed the commission of inquiry, particularly Paul Vannier, who was accused of wanting to "bring down" the government.

On Radio J, the leader of the Modem deputies, Marc Fesneau , who is very close to François Bayrou , also attacked Paul Vannier, judging "this way of treating people quite disgusting." "It's Stalinism," he said, referring to "a prosecution."

"I find the recuperation of La France Insoumise quite disgraceful," declared the leader of the LR deputies, Laurent Wauquiez, on RTL, judging that "we are not facing a political crisis, we are facing a societal crisis."

Much more critical of the Prime Minister, the leader of the Socialist deputies, Boris Vallaud, denounced "a smokescreen" implemented by François Bayrou during these more than five hours of hearing.

"At the end of this hearing, do the French people, the victims, feel that they have been enlightened about what happened? Did they gain additional insight into what happened? I don't think so," he lamented on Public Sénat.

LFI MP Paul Vannier, co-rapporteur of the commission of inquiry, said on Thursday that the latter had admitted to having "lied" in February when he was questioned for the first time in the Assembly about his knowledge of the events in the 1990s. "François Bayrou, thanks to the oath, finally acknowledges that his statements to MPs, to the victims in recent months, were mendacious, were false, were inaccurate," he declared on franceinfo.