It took three days to the Elected State Councilor Neuchâtel Céline Vara to get out of silence. SATURDAY, Blick revealed that the ecologist had recently gone for Oman, sultanate of the Arabian peninsula, where she had stayed with her family in a five -star hotel. A handjob of political and media combat has followed, linked in particular to feminist positions-Oman is by far an example in matters of women’s law-and ecologists of the Green.
More than 5,000 kilometers by plane, it is about two tonnes of CO2 per person, multiplied by four knowing that it was accompanied by her spouse and her two children. A flight that has thus consumed as much as a resident of the European Union over a year, for an elected official who has climate protection as a political battle horse. So much for the grievances. Faced with this media and political surge, Céline Vara spoke in Arcinfoexplaining the reasons for a journey undertaken as “simple family vacation that we have chosen for their programs with sea turtles and for particular fauna”.
“It is obviously preferable to avoid trips by plane”
She immediately excludes any link with her political mandate and explains “having paid the trip of [sa] pocket and [n’avoir] No equity with any sultan ”. A long -term journey that she claims to have spoken around her for two years. The reason for her “silence” around this case, Céline Vara explains so: “I really thought that this trip was in my private life. If I had done something serious in the context of my mandate, I should have explained myself. There, I did not see reason, ”she defends herself. “There is a right to privacy, even in politics. And this right must be respected, especially when no fault has been committed. This is the case here, ”continues the environmentalist.
Faced with those who point the finger at the fault not professional but ideological, the elected state councilor emphasizes having built her “political career on concrete actions, a total and sincere commitment. They attack me personally because they have nothing, politically, against me. ” She also considers herself a victim of a “double standard: what is tolerated or ignores in some politicians becomes a state affair when he is a woman, in particular an environmentalist.”
Put in front of its contradictions, in particular its criticism of the Friborg government having taken the plane to go to London in 2019, the Neuchâtel retorts that “at the time we were talking a lot about young people who were leaving the weekend to party. Greens’ policy stresses that it is obviously preferable to avoid plane trips when you can take the train, which I apply. Plane trips must be an exception. Greens have never forbidden people to do so. ” Céline Vara says he is in any case serene as to her future mandate as a state councilor, after a case that she considers to be only “a media and political blow”.
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