A controversial statement that didn’t pass muster. The unregistered deputy Raphaël Schellenberger, also a member of the departmental council in Alsace, was expelled from the right-wing majority in this community for comments targeting his president’s chief of staff, we learned this Sunday from the latter and from Raphaël Schellenberger.
“He made comments in a public conversation with the mayor that were unacceptable,” said Frédéric Bierry, president (LR) of the European Collectivity of Alsace (CEA). He criticized Raphaël Schellenberger for making derogatory remarks about his chief of staff, “stigmatizing his physical appearance in relation to his cancer”, an illness “he did not want to make public”.
Elected officials compared her to a “witch,” whose illness was “a backlash, like a karmic gift,” reports Frédéric Bierry. “To me, these comments are unbecoming of an elected representative of the Republic”, “he has crossed a humanitarian red line”, said the CEA president.
“Stigmatizing” statements.
After a debate with the president of the majority group, the decision was taken on Thursday to exclude Raphaël Schellenberger, he said, confirming information from Latest News from Alsace.
According to Raphaël Schellenberger, the controversial sentence was uttered “during a private dinner in Paris”. “Even if the comments I made were clumsy, the slightest criticism of this community’s chief of staff would lead to pressure, exclusion, or ostracism. And today, that turned into a political fact,” he said.
For the department’s deputies and advisors, this was a “subterfuge”: “it fit a context where internally, I was the elected official most critical of our actions and annoying.”
