Youth wrestled to ground after slapping French ex-PM Valls

A youth slapped former prime minister Manuel Valls when he was on an election tour in France’s Brittany region on Tuesday and was wrestled to the ground by a security guard, video showed.

Valls, 54, was walking past a group of people in the town of Lamballe after coming out of its municipal offices. He appeared to first shake hands with the youth before the latter shouted: “This is Bretagne!” and reached out to slap the ex-premier.

As Valls recoiled, a security guard seized the youth in a chokehold, pushed him back against a fence and then forced him to the ground, a video aired by local newspaper Le Telegramme showed. Police said later the 18-year-old man was in custody.

There is an extreme right-wing local political group in Brittany, a region in France’s far northwest, but it was unclear if the detained man was politically motivated, a local prosecutor said.

Valls, a Socialist who is running in the Left’s primaries on Sunday to be a candidate for president, did not appear to have been hurt in the incident. He continued shaking hands, telling the crowd, “it’s nothing,” another video showed.

Valls told local reporters later: “I have never been afraid to have contact with the French people. Democracy can never mean violence.”

Valls is seen losing the second round of the upcoming Socialist presidential primaries to either of his two top challengers although he will narrowly lead the first round, a BVA Salesforce poll showed on Wednesday.

Valls, who is on the right wing of his party, is seen losing to either Arnaud Montebourg, his main leftist challenger, or to Benoit Hamon, both former ministers in his government until August 2014.

“Whether against Benoit Hamon or Arnaud Montebourg, Manuel Valls is seen winning 48 per cent of the vote against 52 per cent for his rival,” the pollsters said, adding that the result of the election remained uncertain and within the margin of error.

“Valls, however, is in a tight situation,” the pollsters said.

He is seen winning the first round of the election, being contested by seven candidates, with 34 per cent of the vote, the poll of over 10,000 people carried out between January 13 and 16 showed.

The candidates will meet for a third and final debate on Thursday before the first-round vote on January 22.

Recent polls have shown that no Socialist candidate will make it through to the second round of French presidential elections in May, with conservative candidate Francois Fillon and far-right leader Marine Le Pen most likely to face off against one another

source : gulfnews