Thirty years after the death of the former President of the Council of the Republic then the Senate from 1947 to 1968, votes rise to request his pantheonization. But the figure of “the man who defied General de Gaulle”, originally from Cayenne, arouses still criticizes.
by
“If it was one of the most important men of the IV e for being the only one to chair the Assembly of the Luxembourg Palace since the creation of the Council of the Republic, after Liberation; if he had been fascinated by De Gaulle, Chief of France, to the point of engaging in the maquis under the pseudonym of Saint-Just and gain the rosette of the resistance; if he had been loaded By General de Gaulle to conceive, after the war, a status of emancipation for the former colonies, it remains, above all, the one who dared, with extreme violence, challenge of Gaulle on behalf of the Republic and to accuse him before D others, but in vain, at the same time to violate the Constitution, to show arbitrary, to be tempted by the dictatorship and even by prime minister interposed, to commit the crime of package, “wrote André Pass in Le Monde In the aftermath of death, November 7, 1991, from Gaston Monnerville.
Still long after his death, at the age of 94, Gaston Monneville remained “The man who defied General de Gaulle”. What the Gaullists did not forgive him, working to reject in oblivion one of the major figures of the IV e republic, elected in 1932, under the III e Republic. Perhaps also because he had “fault” in their eyes to have black skin, to be from Cayenne, Guyana. It is on behalf of these racial prejudices, although it was not said, that the parliamentarians of the Republic went up to the thirteenth round of voting, in December 1953, to elect a President of the Republic, René Coty, who, at the Departure, had not made a candidate, in order to prevent the one who presided over the Council of the Republic and in principle intended to access the Supreme Judiciary. The slave grandson, on both sides of his parents, conceived a deep wound.
“An exceptional destiny”
That’s why, too, it was necessary to wait until 2006 for a nearest esplanade to Luxembourg took the name of the one who presided over the Council of the Republic then the Senate for twenty-one, from 1947 to 1968. Thirty years after his death, many movements and associations, personalities of all stripes militate and plead with the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, for Gaston Monneville to be welcomed to the Pantheon. Exhibitions and symposia pay tribute to him and restore the memory of “an exceptional destiny”, according to his biographer, Jean-Paul Brunet (Ibis Rouge editions, 2013).
“The time heals the injuries that have marked our political history,” recently declared the president of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, heir to the Gaullism, in opening a round table dedicated to “one of [his] more glorious predecessors” . “He continues to embody the commitment, audacity, independence and courage at the service of the Republican ideal. He struggled for justice and freedom. (…) without ever denying his Guyanese origins, he has Exceeded the invisible borders of racial, social, political, cultural prejudices, “greeted Mr. Larcher, before concluding:” He who presided over the entrance to the Victor Schœlcher and Félix Eboué [in 1949] seems to me deserve to join them today. “
You have 59.44% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.