As France heads toward a feverish snap election, French MEP Raphaël Glucksmann compared his country’s president to the Roman emperor who presided over a fire that laid waste to his capital city, as well as to the Roman official who presided over the trial of Jesus.

Glucksmann, a center-left MEP and star of the French left who sits with the Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament, lambasted a decision by President Emmanuel Macron to call a legislative election in response to the stunning victory of the far-right National Rally party in the European election.

“Emmanuel Macron played Nero by deciding to dissolve the National Assembly when nothing obliged him to do so,” Glucksmann said on Thursday. “And now it’s Pontius Pilate who washes his hands of it.”

As emperor, Nero was known for his debauchery and for assassinating his political enemies. He was even suspected of setting the fire in 64 A.D. that destroyed over 70 percent of Rome — though historians dispute the truth of the rumor.

In the Bible, Pontius Pilate was a Roman governor who ordered the crucifixion of Jesus and washed his hands in a basin of water to signify his lack of culpability for the condemned man’s bloody fate.

Calling a snap election was a gamble “to limit the damage” to Macron’s party and to weaken the left, Glucksmann said. As such, he added, the strategy was “extremely dangerous” and could backfire if voters end up supporting the National Rally en masse.

“So that there is no extreme-right majority, the [Macron camp] has one thing to do, and that is to get out of neither-nor,” Glucksmann said, referring to voters who shun both right-wing and left-wing parties.

Politico

More about: