French PM booed as Nice remembers dead
Valls feels the anger of Riviera city’s residents as country observes a minute’s silence
France’s unity in the face of terror was shattered as the prime minister was booed by a crowd in Nice gathered for a minute’s silence for the victims of the Bastille Day attack. Around 42,000 people cheered the emergency services, but there were shouts of “Resign!” as Manuel Valls arrived at the seafront for the ceremony to remember the 84 people killed last Thursday by truck driver Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. Last night, Bouhlel was described as an “ultra-violent sadist” as police questioned a 73-yearold man reported to be his lover.
POLITICAL unity in France in the face of terror shattered yesterday after the prime minister was roundly booed by a huge crowd in Nice gathered for a minute of silence for the victims of the Bastille Day attack.
All over France, people observed the silence, while some 42,000 residents of the Riviera city cheered and applauded emergency services and police, chanting “Merci, merci”.
But there were angry shouts of “Murderers!” and “Resign!” as Manuel Valls, the prime minister, arrived at the seafront for the ceremony to remember the 84 people mowed down on July 14 by truck driver Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
After a period of shock at the carnage wreaked by the 31-year-old Tunisian, who rammed a 19-ton truck into a crowd leaving a fireworks display, emotions are now running high in France.
After the political truce in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo and Paris November terror attacks, this latest massacre sparked angry accusations from the Right-wing opposition that the ruling Socialists did not do enough to prevent Thursday’s killings.
With presidential and legislative elections looming next year and primaries due in November, Nicolas Sarkozy, head of the opposition party, The Republicans, accused President François Hollande of “trembling” in the face of terror.
“Everything that should have been done over the past 18 months has not been done,” claimed the ex-president, who is eyeing re-election next year.
“France cannot let its children be murdered,” said Mr Sarkozy, who called for all foreign-born terror suspects to be deported.
His rival for the presidential nomina- tion, Alain Juppé, has also claimed that the attack “wouldn’t have happened” if security had been tighter.
The government has also come under fire from experts for brushing aside recommendations for an intelligence shake-up by a parliamentary inquiry that highlighted “multiple failings” before the November attacks in Paris.
Support for Mr Hollande rallied after the previous two terror attacks, but an Ifop poll in yesterday’s Le Figaro suggested that only 33 per cent of the French trust him to protect them.
Nice has long been a bastion of the Right. Christian Estrosi, a security hardliner and ex-Sarkozy minister who is now president of the wider Riviera region, accused the government of failing completely in his city.
“When the interior minister says there were enough police, it constitutes a blatant lie,” he told i-Tele television. “He said there were 64 national policemen on duty.”
Tensions were evident among the crowd on the promenade, where a socalled “hate memorial” of stones and litter has sprung up at the point the attacker was shot dead. A confrontation erupted after a man was heard telling a woman to go back to her country, with bystanders joining in the abuse before the police intervened.