The president of the Francophone liberal MR party Georges-Louis Bouchez was hit in the face with a pie during a book signing at a Fnac shop in Liège on Saturday, footage shows.
After the incident, bystanders wrestled the pie-thrower to the ground and Bouchez smeared some of the pie on the man's head. Security personnel restrained the man and called the police.
"There was someone smart enough to throw a pie at me," Bouchez said in a video post to his social media. "Too bad, because it looked like a tasty one to me. In fact, I was able to taste it. After the incident, I was keen to engage with him, he was perhaps not on the same wavelength as me politically. There was certainly no question of revenge. I always want to engage in discussions with anyone, but never using violence."
Bouchez's team told the newspaper that a father and son joined the queue for an autograph around 11:30. "The two said they worked in construction but seemed somewhat incoherent," Sudinfo reports.
Then, the son asked if he could take a selfie with Bouchez. As they stood next to each other, the father took out a pie from a box and threw it at the MR leader's face.
Bouchez was at Fnac in Liège on Saturday morning between 10:30 and 12:00 for a signing session around his new book À batons rompus. After cleaning himself up a little bit, he continued with his book signing. Bouchez told Sudinfo newspapers that he plans to file a complaint.
According to the cake-thrower, it was "a political act" and throwing cakes is allowed by law.
