A deputy attacked on the front steps of his house
“It looked like stoning. ” Stéphane Claireaux, deputy (LRM) for Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, 57, was attacked during a demonstration organized by the association Ensemble et Libres, created a few weeks earlier to oppose the establishment of a sanitary pass in the archipelago off the coast of Canada. Standing on the steps of his home, masked because tested positive for Covid-19 the day before, the elected official was targeted by jets of algae, seaweed and a pebble. In an interview given to the Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon La Première channel, the politician testified to the death threats received by email: “I am told that they will slit my throat and split my body in two. ” Visibly affected, the MP concluded: “I didn’t sign up for this. ”
A communicator invested in community life
Originally from the archipelago and the son of a former journalist from Radio France Outre-mer (RFO), Stéphane Claireaux first launched a communication agency which was in charge of creating websites in the late 1990s. In Saint-Pierre, the capital of the overseas territory, he made a name for himself in the associative milieu. Member of a local rock group, he is also part of the office of Saint-Pierre Animation which is dedicated to youth and heritage rehabilitation, such as on Île aux Marins, a strip of land less than 2 kilometers , known for its old fishermen’s houses. The outline of a first political project.
A convert to politics almost in spite of himself
In 2000, Annick Girardin, a figure in local politics, created the Cap on the Future party, close to the Left Radical Party. It is the main opposition formation in Archipel tomorrow, identified on the right. Except that political vocations are lacking: she recruits from among her relatives, including Stéphane Claireaux, met in community life. Substitute for Annick Girardin, he became a deputy in June 2014, after a partial legislative process and the appointment of the President of Cap on the Future as Secretary of State in the government of Manuel Valls. With the entry of Girardin into the Macron government, he will not leave the Hemicycle for seven years.
The assault on Stéphane Claireaux at his own home during the demonstration against the health pass is abso… https://t.co/EOAn0zG2g5
The local government “spokesperson”
The deputy, member of the LRM group since July 2017, is considered, by some residents, as the spokesperson for the government on the archipelago, whose community is headed by Archipel tomorrow. At the National Assembly, Stéphane Claireaux positioned himself in the left wing of La République en Marche: in 2019, he co-signed a platform to distribute refugees in rural areas, in order to compensate for the lack of manpower; and he votes against the Comprehensive Security Act, with just nine other LRM deputies. The violent aggression of January 9, 2022 would call his political commitment into question. For the territorial elections of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, in March 2022, his Cap on the Future party has still not presented any list.