Martine Wonner, former LREM deputy who became the face of the anti-health pass

Published on : 08/07/2021 – 17:47

In a few months, the deputy of Bas-Rhin, Martine Wonner, disowned by the Macronist party, of which she occupied the ranks in the National Assembly, has become a rallying figure for anti-vaccines and anti-health passes, which parade Saturday August 7 throughout France.

The elected 57-year-old is of all the demonstrations. At the platform on July 17 in Paris, it was she who took the microphone in front of the crowd of opponents to the sanitary pass. While the latter ask her how to challenge their elected representatives, she invites them to “make the seat of parliamentarians” and “invade their offices”. These words will attract the wrath of the deputies, already very annoyed by the slippages of the character on the Covid-19. The Liberties and Territories group (LT) which had welcomed her into its ranks after her exclusion from LREM in May, no longer wants her and the boss of the elected representatives of the majority, Christophe Castaner, has taken legal action.

Among covidosceptics and conspirators, on the other hand, Martine Wonner’s speech earned her great success. In the very heterogeneous galaxy of anti-vaccines, it becomes the “elected” guarantee of the movement, its voice in the Assembly, where moreover it does not always wear the mask.

During the examination of the bill which extends the sanitary pass and imposes the vaccination obligation on caregivers, on July 25, the Alsatian elected representative meets the frank hostility of the hemicycle to each of her denunciations of a drift ” totalitarian “or an” apartheid “regime. “How does a conspirator work? You have four hours,” tackled Minister Olivier Véran. “History will be remembered!” She said. Bruno Millienne (Modem) slammed him with a backhand: “She will not remember you”.

Social media success

Less known to the general public than the actor Jean-Marie Bigard or the singer Francis Lalanne, Martine Wonner, psychiatrist, is nevertheless very followed on the networks. She has tens of thousands of followers on Twitter and Facebook. For over a year, she has been relentlessly broadcasting infoxes on masks and vaccines to the chagrin of her colleagues.

At the end of June, filmed in a taxi, Martine Wonner says that airlines prohibit their flights to vaccinated people, information repeatedly denied. The video is shared some 10,000 times in three days.

A “social” profile

Trained as a doctor, Martine Wonner is one of those deputies from civil society, elected in 2017 after wearing the colors of the presidential party. She went through the Samu social in 2013 and held several advisory and management positions in public and private hospitals, which earned her to be spotted by Emmanuel Macron for his expertise on psychiatry and on great precariousness. .

Positioning itself more to the left than the presidential majority, with a more “social” profile, it distanced itself from 2018, by abstaining from voting on the asylum-immigration law, then other texts supported by the majority such as the anti-breakers law of February 2019, or the ratification of Ceta – the free trade agreement between the European Union and Canada.

Hydroxychloroquine on the far right

In 2020, the health crisis passes by and ends up annoying the member with her majority. The changeover takes place in a few months. Very quickly Martine Wonner takes the opposite view of the majority of experts by defending hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of Covid-19. With her collective Let the doctors prescribe, she campaigns in favor of a medical protocol. Deemed dangerous, this protocol will be quickly denounced by the Order of Physicians. The only LREM MP to have voted against the executive’s deconfinement strategy, she was excluded from the party on May 6, 2020.

After her spring 2020 divorce from Emmanuel Macron’s party, she briefly joined an environmental group in the Assembly. But his tweets are problematic. She relays far-right sites and the co-president of Ecology, Democracy, Solidarity, Mathieu l’Orphelin, asks her to withdraw them, which she refuses to do, preferring to turn on her heels.

Today, the member is no longer affiliated with any party. She announced at the end of July that she was preparing to launch her own “movement”. An “apolitical and citizen movement” which will address “all those French citizens who cannot take it any longer,” she said, adding “that one of the first things that should be done would be to dissolve the political parties. “.

With AFP