French politicians shine at passing the buck over Paris football riots

If you've been following the news this week, then you've probably seen the "celebrations that turned sour" when violence broke out on the streets of Paris as the city's football team Paris-Saint-Germain and its fans marked the club's first league title in 19 years.

The contrast couldn't have been greater to similar parades organised in England and Spain for their championship-winning teams Manchester United and Barcelona.

And although not all was apparently as calm in Manchester as perhaps the French media portrayed it, the scenes were nothing to match those that occurred in Paris.

It was well documented because so many French media outlets had teams "on the ground" reporting "en direct" almost as though they were willing, or at least expecting, something to happen.

And as we all know, it did.



But while the French media was pretty thorough in covering the whole debacle as it happened, it hasn't had as much success persuading the country's politicians to take their part of the blame for what happened.

Manuel Valls (screenshot from TF1 news)

The interior minister, Manuel Valls, appeared on radio and television, "condemning the violence" (well, he's hardly going to praise it now, is he?) and saying it showed that football, and in particular in the capital, was "ill".

And when asked by the mild-mannered and inoffensive anchor Gilles Bouleau on Tuesday's edition of TF1's evening news whether he, as minister in charge of the "forces of law and order" was willing to take his share of the responsibility for what had happened just as Frédéric Thiriez, the president of the French league Frédéric Thiriez had done, Valls delivered a sermon befitting of a politician eager to pass the buck.

"There were enough police present," he insisted, refusing to accept any blame even though viewers had just seen footage of riot police abandoning their positions when some of the worst scenes of violence broke out and deciding not to intervene when a coach carrying tourists was attacked.

"It was a minority of vandals intent on causing trouble who set others off," he maintained.

"There's violence in our society and there were those present who didn't just want to spoil the celebrations. They were there to fight, to steal and to vandalise."



Faced with a politician "singing" from such a well-prepared hymn sheet, Bouleau clearly had no chance of gaining even the slightest admission of accountability.

Mind you, the team on "La Matinale" on Canal + fared no better the following morning with the sports minister Valérie Fourneyron, even though collectively they were certainly more pugnacious in their questioning - or at least they tried to be.

Fourneyron refused point blank to respond directly to sports journalist Sylvère-Henry Cissé when he said it was hard to believe that "nobody could have anticipated trouble" (and thereby implying politicians had some part to play in what happened) given the number of pre-celebration preparations that had taken place.

"Those responsible for what happened were the vandals themselves who transformed the celebrations into a riot," she said, trotting out exactly the same "explanation" as Valls had done the previous evening and talking over Cissé's attempts to get her admit at least partial responsibility.

Instead Fourneyron preferred to repeat (from nine minutes and 24 seconds in the video below) that the "celebrations had been spoilt" and the penalties for those who had been arrested would have to be harsh.

Yes, it really was just like watching and hearing Valls II.

As the show's host Ariane Massenet summed it up, for Fourneyron (and by extension Valls and the government) what had happened was solely the fault of those vandals who had caused the violence. End of story.

La Matinale du 15/05 - Partie 1

Reality TV

It was not so much the force of Monday morning’s dawn raid by police in the Parisian suburb of Villiers-le-Bel that had the headline writers scribbling for fury. It was more the fact that they were accompanied by a virtual armada of journalists, all of whom had been tipped off as to what was about to happen.

More than 1,000 police took part in the sweep to target the ringleaders of last November’s riots, which left more than 100 officers injured after they came under attack from Molotov cocktails and gunfire. That unrest occurred after two teenagers died when their scooter collided with a police car.

While many here in France welcomed the police action, there were more than a few voices raised in alarm at the fact that it had received media saturation as it happened.

The chairman of the Socialist party, François Hollande was quick to condemn the unprecedented media presence as “unacceptable in a major democracy such as France.” And he was joined in his concern by both fellow party member Segolene Royal, last year’s defeated candidate in the presidential run-off, and the leader of the centre-right Mouvement Démocrate, François Bayrou.

Royal suggested that allowing cameras to cover police operations had been a way of trying to influence public opinion ahead of next month’s local elections, by spreading fear.

Somewhat hypocritically perhaps, the media also concentrated on the issue of how come journalists had been in on the action. Readers, viewers and listeners were tantalised with endless questions as to who had leaked information of the raids ahead of time. But of course, all in the name of professional integrity those same journalists simultaneously refused to divulge their sources. Quite right too, after all it keeps a story rolling.

The minister of the interior, Michèle Alliot-Marie (affectionately termed MAM by many here in France), of course preferred to concentrate on what she stressed was the success of the action – allegedly based on tip-offs from paid informers. The police took 35 people into custody and reportedly have leads on several others they suspect of arson and attempted murder. But all the same MAM has promised to launch an enquiry into who informed the media.

Perhaps the main lesson to be learned here is that there is no longer a need for French television channels in the future to buy the rights for imported detective series. After all they now have “authorised” access to insider information and the chance to record the action as and when it happens in real time.