Words “unfit to be an elected representative of the Republic”. The President of the LR of the European Community of Alsace (CEA, the result of the merger of the Haut and Bas-Rhin departmental councils), Frédéric Bierry, has no shortage of qualifiers this November 23 to show “humanity red line” crossed by Raphaël Schellenberger. This Alsatian department council member, who is also an (unlisted) deputy, was on Thursday expelled from the CEA’s right-wing majority. At issue: words spoken by elected officials targeting chief of staff Frédéric Bierry, who is suffering from cancer.
The information was leaked to the local press this Sunday morning, via an article from Latest news from Alsace. The majority president criticized Raphaël Schellenberger, 35, for his words “stigmatizing physical appearance” from his chief of staff “linked to cancer”disease “which he did not wish to publish”.
The daily reported that this happened in Paris, Tuesday evening, during a dinner held in the presence of the mayor of the parliamentarian’s constituency. Still according to Frédéric Bierry, elected officials compared it to a “witch”to whom “That wig doesn’t even fit her” whose cancer will occur “a backlash, like a reward for karma”. Birry emphasized: “I always defended (Raphaël Schellenberger, editor’s note), I said a lot to him, because I liked his intelligence, but no human being can be treated like him (…) He went beyond acceptable limits.”
The person concerned did not deny this statement “clumsy”. “If I made an embarrassing comment, I apologize”he added, but maintained that he said it “at a private dinner in Paris”. He also criticized, to AFP, the imbalance in the decision: “The slightest criticism of this community’s chief of staff would lead to pressure, exclusion or ostracism. And now, that has turned into a political fact.”
The department advisor even qualified these sentences as “pretext”. “It fits into a context where internally, I was the elected official who was most critical of our actions and annoying.”
