She won the 2022 French People's Primary, winning the right to stand as a "unity left" candidate in the 2022 French presidential election.[2] It was her second bid after the 2002 French presidential election where she failed to qualify to the second round after garnering only 2.32% of the votes in the first round. She dropped out of the race on 2 March 2022 after failing to get enough support to qualify.[3]
In 2002 Taubira was a Left Radical Party (PRG) candidate for the Presidency although she did not belong to the Party; she won 2.32% of the votes. After 2002 she became the party's vice-president. She was elected as its Deputy in the 2002 elections and chose to join the Socialists' group in the Assembly.
Taubira was initially supposed to work with Junior Minister Delphine Batho. However, their relationship quickly broke down being unable to share responsibilities. After the June 2012 Legislative elections, Batho was moved to become Minister of Ecology replacing Nicole Bricq, leaving Taubira in charge of the Ministry of Justice. She resigned her position as Minister of Justice on 27 January 2016 after a disagreement with President Hollande over policies related to the treatment of French Nationals convicted of terrorism.[13]
In 2013, Taubira voiced her support for land reforms in France's Caribbean territories as compensation for slavery.[14] She also formally implemented an important electoral promise of François Hollande[15] and introduced Law 2013-404, which legalised same-sex marriage in France.
In 2014 Taubira successfully defied opposition parties' calls for her to quit after it emerged that she knew former PresidentNicolas Sarkozy's phone was being tapped, apparently contradicting an earlier statement from her.[16] She reportedly considered resigning in August 2014, along with other left-wing cabinet members such as Arnaud Montebourg, in protest against Hollande's economic policies.[17]
Taubira resigned in January 2016 after openly disagreeing with the French president's proposal to strip French nationality from dual-citizens convicted of terrorism, a measure championed by Hollande in the wake of the terrorist attacks that shook Paris on 13 November;[13]Minister of the InteriorManuel Valls had taken charge of the constitutional reform draft law, which would normally have been part of her portfolio.[18] One week later, she published Murmures à la jeunesse, a book about this proposal.[19]
Later career
Despite being urged to join the race by supporters, Taubira chose not to run in the Socialist Party's 2017 presidential primary,[20] and remained neutral in the contest; following his nomination Taubira later endorsed Benoît Hamon as the party's candidate for the 2017 French presidential election.[21] In the second round of the presidential election she called on voters to rally behind Emmanuel Macron.[22]
Taubira formally announced her candidacy for the 2022 presidential election in January 2022 [23] and won the "people's primary" intended to select a consensus left-wing candidate.[24] By March 2022, the Constitutional Council published data showing Taubira had failed to win enough endorsements from elected officials to qualify for the presidential election.[25]
Political views
Immigration
Taubira is a vocal critic of illegal immigration to French Guiana. In 2007 Taubira stated that "We are at an identity turning point. The ethnic Guyanese have become a minority on their own land" as a result of illegal immigration.[26][27] In recent years Taubira has called for solidarity with refugees in Metropolitan France.[28]
Victim of racist attacks
Like other female ministers Taubira has faced many racist and sexist insults.[29]
Taubira allowed the Guyanese political party Walwari to make a direct citation in the Cayenne criminal court against Anne-Sophie Leclère, a candidate for the Front National who in October 2013 shared a racist cartoon comparing Taubira to a monkey on her Facebook page. Leclère was sentenced to nine months in prison and five years of ineligibility by the court before the judgement was quashed on appeal as Walwari's actions were deemed invalid.[30]
In September 2016 the Paris criminal court, which had opened an investigation when the facts were revealed, found Leclère guilty of the crime of public insult and sentenced her to a suspended fine of 3,000 euros.
In November 2013 the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the comments, which it considered as racist attacks against Taubira, in particular those on the cover of the extreme right-wing weekly Minute, which featured her photo with the caption: "Clever as a monkey, Taubira finds the banana". The weekly rejected the accusation of racism, arguing that it merely used two French expressions, "the second of which - the part about the banana - is familiarly used to describe a person in good shape". The minister denounced comments of "extreme violence", denying her "belonging to the human race". The weekly's editor was sentenced to a fine of 10,000 euros for its front page on 30 October 2014. The public prosecutor's office appealed against the fine, saying that it was too lenient.
Taubira has been married twice.[35] She has four children with her second husband, Roland Delannon.[35][36][37] They are divorced.[35][37] Delannon is a separatist politician who founded the Decolonization and Social Emancipation Movement; he was jailed for 18 months for planning to blow up an oil and gas facility in the 1980s.[36][37]
Books
(in French)L'Esclavage raconté à ma fille ("Slavery explained to my daughter"), Paris, Bibliophane, coll. « Les mots à coeur », 2002 (réimpr. 2006), 165 p. (ISBN2-86970-064-4 et 2-86970-122-5).
(in French)Codes noirs : de l'esclavage aux abolitions, Paris, Dalloz, coll. « A savoir », 2006, 150 p. (ISBN2-247-06857-X) (introduction).
(in French)Rendez-vous avec la République ("Meeting with the Republic"), Paris, La Découverte, coll. « Cahiers libres », 2006, 195 p. (ISBN978-2-7071-5091-2).
(in French)Égalité pour les exclus : le politique face à l'histoire et à la mémoire coloniales, Paris, Temps Présent, 2009, 93 p. (ISBN978-2-916842-01-1).
(in French)Mes météores : combats politiques au long cours, Paris, Flammarion, 2012, 551 p. (ISBN978-2-08-127895-0).
(in French)Paroles de liberté ("Words of Freedom"), Paris, Flammarion, coll. " Café Voltaire ", 2014, 138 p. (ISBN978-2-08-133688-9).
(in French)Murmures à la jeunesse, 2016.
(in French)Nous habitons la Terre, 2017, REY, 128 p. (ISBN978-2848766119).
(in French)Nuit d'épine ("Thorny Night"), Paris, Plon, 2019, 288 p. (ISBN978-2259278652).
^Hélène Pillon, « Ces femmes politiques dans le viseur des racistes », sur lexpress.fr, 13 novembre 2013 (consulté le 10 août 2015).
^« Anne-Sophie Leclère, ex-candidate FN qui avait comparé Christiane Taubira à un singe, condamnée à une amende avec sursis » [archive], huffiningtonpost.fr, 28 septembre 2016 (consulté le 14 février 2017).
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