Macron faces backlash over beating
The disturbing footage from a May protest in Paris begins with a man in a black jacket, grey hoodie and police helmet forcefully pushing a woman down the street, his right hand tight around the back of her neck.
When those two disappear from the frame, the camera shows a group of police officers dragging a young man down the street. Another man in what appears to be civilian clothes is struggling against the protester, who is now kneeling.
Then the first man in the black jacket re-appears, approaches the kneeling man from behind, grabs him by the neck and yanks him away from the group. Then he beats him.
The video, which circulated on social media, was recorded at a Workers’ Day protest in May, and this past week Le Monde identified the black-jacketed man as Alexandre Benalla, a security aide of French President Emmanuel Macron. That identification prompted a series of questions, including what Benalla was doing at the protest to begin with, why he beat the protesters, and whether his superiors knew about it and failed to respond appropriately.
Tonight NZT, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb will have to answer some of them as Parliament plans to grill him over whether the government mishandled the incident.
The incident and its aftermath have grown into a political scandal that took another turn yesterday as French investigators raided Benalla’s home in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, a suburb of Paris.
Collomb is facing accusations that he knew about Benalla’s behaviour and didn’t take appropriate action. The 26-year-old Benalla was suspended for two weeks at the time but has appeared at a number of high-profile events since then. The BBC reports that he worked as a bodyguard for Macron during his campaign and was later hired by the president’s chief of staff.
Following outcry over the footage, the Elysee dismissed him on Saturday. Benalla was taken into custody with another bodyguard, Vincent Crase, who also reportedly also appears in video footage from the May protest and has previously worked for Macron’s political party. In communist Cuba, the right to own private property will be enshrined and foreign investment encouraged. Power will no longer be concentrated in the hands of one ruler.
Cuba’s legislators are taking a major leap towards adopting those and other changes in the island nation’s most significant bid for constitutional reform in decades.
The move follows the retirement of Rau´l Castro as the country’s head of state and suggests a cautious advance in the remaking of Cuba in an era when other communist countries have embraced the free market.
Perhaps the most significant change in a proposed new constitution: the creation of the position of prime minister, who would share power with the president. The decision to limit President Miguel D´ıaz-Canel’s influence so soon by creating the new post suggests a bid to sidestep a possible jostling for position to rule Cuba in the post-Castro era. Cuban lawmakers yesterday approved the Cabinet named by DiazCanel, keeping most of the ministers from Raul Castro’s government in place, except for in the key post of economic reform.
The national assembly received the proposed reform of Cuba’s 1976 constitution that would reshape its government, courts and economy, and pave the way for same-sex marriage, although it would maintain the Communist Party as the sole political force in the country. The charter will be put to a national referendum in the coming months then return to the assembly.