PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron’s government survived two votes of no confidence Tuesday in the wake of a political and public uproar triggered by a video of his chief bodyguard beating a protester.
The government easily won the largely symbolic votes in France’s lower house of parliament. Macron’s centrist party has a large majority in the National Assembly.
The motions, which needed 289 votes to pass, were brought by the conservative Republicans and opposition lawmakers from the left and far-left. The first received 143 votes, and the second got 74.
Macron’s government has been under fire since France’s Le Monde newspaper identified the now-former security aide, Alexandre Benalla, as the person captured on camera wearing a police helmet and striking a man at a May Day protest.
Subsequent revelations about the government’s handling of the violence, including the two-week suspension Benalla received in May, have drawn further criticism.
Critics also have focused on why officials in the president’s office did not immediately disclose what happened, terminate Benalla and refer the matter for investigation.
After Le Monde reported on the beating and an investigation was opened, Benalla, 26, was handed preliminary charges that included committing violence in a group, interfering in the exercise of a public function and the unauthorized public display of official insignia.
The leader of the Republicans in the National Assembly, Christian Jacob, told lawmakers that the scandal was not “an affair for the left or the right.”
“This is a question of transparency, honor, integrity,” Jacob said before Tuesday’s votes. “That is why, in the name of the Republicans, I am asking you to sanction this government.”
Under the French Constitution, the prime minister, not the president, is accountable to parliament.