PARIS (AP) – France’s charismatic justice minister unexpectedly resigned Wednesday after objecting to President Francois Hollande’s push to revoke citizenship from convicted terrorists with dual nationality.
Hollande announced Christiane Taubira’s resignation just ahead of a Cabinet meeting and hours before a Parliament commission takes up the citizenship bill.
Taubira, a leftist best known for championing the legalization of gay marriage, tweeted that “sometimes to resist is to remain, sometimes to resist is to leave.” As a black woman from French Guiana on the Caribbean coast, she has been a pioneer for women and minorities in French politics but sometimes a target for racist slurs by far-right militants.
“I’m leaving the government on a major disagreement,” Taubira told journalists. “The terrorist threat is serious and unpredictable but we have learned to hunt it down. … I think we cannot concede it any victory, whether it’s a military, diplomatic, political or symbolic one.”
Taubira is being replaced by Jean-Jacques Urvoas, a Socialist lawmaker from Brittany considered a specialist on security issues who is seen as close to Prime Minister Manuel Valls.