Danièle Obono

Danièle Obono
Obono in 2017
Member of the National Assembly for Paris's 17th constituency
Incumbent
Assumed office 21 June 2017
Preceded by	Daniel Vaillant
Personal details
Born	(1980-07-12) 12 July 1980 Libreville, Estuaire, Gabon
Nationality	Gabonese, French
Political party	La France Insoumise
Other political affiliations	Front de Gauche
Parent	Martin Edzodzomo-Ela (father)
Alma mater	Panthéon-Sorbonne University

Danièle Obono (French pronunciation: [danjɛl ɔbɔno]; born 12 July 1980) is a far-left Gabonese-French politician who has represented the 17th constituency of Paris in the National Assembly since 2017. A member of La France Insoumise (FI), she was reelected in the first round of the 2022 legislative election.

Biography

Early life & Education

Obono was born on 12 July 1980 in Libreville, Gabon to a prominent Gabonese family. She is the daughter of Hortense Simbou Mbadinga, a secretary at Air Gabon; and Martin Edzodzomo-Ela, an economist who was a senior executive at the Paribas-Gabon bank from 1975 to 1979 before he was dismissed for his opposition to the regime of Omar Bongo, who was also a candidate in the Gabonese presidential election of 1998. She lived in Gabon until she was about ten years old, before she attended university in Montpellier. She became a naturalised French citizen in 2011.

After graduating from university, Obono became a librarian in Paris. In 2002, she obtained a master's degree in history at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, studying the economic relationship between France and Gabon during the second half of the 20th century under the supervision of Jacques Marseille. In 2003, she started a doctoral programme in political science at the Institut des mondes africains, focusing on social and democratic movements in Nigeria, though she began her political career before completing that degree.

Start in Politics

At the age of 20, Danièle Obono, a supporter of José Bové, participated in the dismantling of the Millau McDonald's . There, she met Attac activists and joined the Trotskyist movement "Socialism from Below"(SPEB) . A few years later, SPEB merged with the Revolutionary Communist League, which was later reformed into the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in 2009. She became a member of the NPA's leadership, where she advocated for the Convergences et alternative (C&A) current.

Expressing a desire to participate in the Left Front, C&A became an independent organization in 2011,. Obono took part in the national council of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's campaign for the 2012 presidential election.

In the legislative elections of the same year, she was the substitute candidate for Ian Brossat(PCF), under the Left Front label, in the 17th constituency of Paris. With 13.19% of the expressed votes, they came in 3rd place.

Two years later, in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, she leads the "Left Front - In Paris, People First!" list, which will garner 192 votes (2.8%) in the 2014 municipal elections. In 2014, Convergences et alternatives also merges with other left-wing parties to form Ensemble! . She leaves the party between 2017 and 2022.

2017 French Presidential Elections

Danièle Obono integrates La France insoumise into her creation. During the 2017 French presidential election campaign, she was one of the spokespersons for candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and spokesperson (“national speaker”) for La France insoumise. She coordinates, with the agro-economist Laurent Levard, the collection of “Livrets de La France insoumise”, programmatic complements to L’Avenir en commun, one of the issues of which she co-wrote with the philosopher Benoît Schneckenburger, entitled Against Racism and discrimination: Bringing equality to life.

Danièle Obono was elected deputy for the 17th constituency of Paris during the [[2017 French legislative elections]], receiving 50.71% of the votes, or 319 votes ahead, in the second round against Béatrice Faillès, candidate for La République en Marche (Renaissance).

2022 French PresidentialElections

During the 2022 French legislative election campaign, she has been criticized for appearing with Danielle Simonnet in the company of British MP Jeremy Corbyn, accused of complacency with anti-semitism .

She was re-elected in the first round under the New Ecological and Social People's Union (NUPES) with 16,161 votes, or 57.07% of the votes cast .

Following a vote during the session of Tuesday July 26, 2022 at the French National Assembly, she was elected judge at the ''Cour de Justice de la République''. She was officially sworn in the next day .

Position taking and Parliamentary activity

Secretary of the National Assembly's European Affairs Committee, Danièle Obono is ranked as the 6th most active MP by the business magazine Capital after six months in office.

Shortly after her election, Danièle Obono declared herself to be an alterglobalist, afrofeminist (Black feminism), anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-liberal, anti-Islamophobe and pan-Africanist . She also humorously defines herself as a "Bolsho-Trotsko-Marxist", from Trotskyism and Marxism("I have fun claiming these 'isms' when we're told there's no such thing as ideology anymore."), and adds that although "Leninism was [her] gateway [...], anarchists are allies .

Parliamentary activity

Secretary of the Delegation for Overseas France and vice-chair of the study group on discrimination and LGBTQI-phobia in the world , she chairs the France-Bangladesh friendship group .

Opposed to the 2018 Asylum and Immigration Act, she considers it to be "useless, counterproductive and dangerous", as it "separates good migrants from bad ones, exiles to be kept from exiles to be expelled " . On the other hand, the government and Interior Minister Gérard Collomb defend the bill in the name of "stepping up the fight against illegal immigration" .

In a written question to the government in December 2018, she gave her support to Biram Dah Abeid, "an anti-slavery figure in Mauritania" . On December 3rd 2019, as a member of the Law Commission, she tabled a bill on "stabilising and securing funding and jobs within associations" , which aims to define the subsidy as a "funding contract standard" and to extend the powers of the Haut Conseil à la vie associative (High Council for Associative Life) in response to the decline in the number of employees in the associative sector.

Political career

Following the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack, Obono was at the centre of a controversy after she stated she would "not cry", deeming the weekly newspaper's cartoons "racist".

A member of La France Insoumise, Obono was elected to the National Assembly for the 17th constituency of Paris in the legislative election of 2017. She was a spokesperson for La France Insoumise under the leadership Jean-Luc Mélenchon, together with Alexis Corbière.

In the legislature, Obono has served on the Committee on Legal Affairs, the Committee on European Affairs and the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

In November 2017, she was involved in another controversy after she defended union meetings in Seine-Saint-Denis that were closed to white people. After the government announced it would sue the organisers, Obono had an altercation with Mélenchon in the National Assembly, following his support of the government on this matter.

In August 2020, the right-wing French magazine Valeurs actuelles published a seven-page fantasy story and illustrations of Obono as a slave in chains facing the sunset, shackled beside a fire, under the title "summer fantasy story", prompting an outcry from politicians of various parties.

Questioned about Hamas following the terrorist attacks of 7 October 2023, Danielle Obono, told French radio Sud Radio on 17 october that "yes, Hamas is a resistance movement. It's an Islamist political group that has an armed wing, and is resisting Israel », refusing to qualify it a terrorist organization.