A funny exercise for François Bayrou. Appointed Prime Minister but not yet given a Government, the tenant of Matignon faced the “Questions to the Government” alone this Tuesday, December 17 at the National Assembly. An exercise all the more solitary as it concentrates all the opposition’s shots.
There was no shortage of these while the choice of François Bayrou to remain mayor of Pau and chair its municipal council, Monday December 16, was the subject of numerous criticisms. The Macronist President of the Assembly announced the color in the morning in a declaration which implicitly recounts the new relationship between the Prime Minister and the President. Yaël Braun-Pivet affirmed on Franceinfo that she would have “preferred that the Prime Minister took the plane to Mayotte”, devastated by cyclone Chido, rather than attending the Pau municipal council.
“No one understood the message,” said Marine Tondelier, for EELV, extending to the councilor’s position for the return of the accumulation of local and national mandates. Rather, he demonstrated that when we try to do everything, we do everything wrong. » Same tone for Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the PCF: “He makes his choices and he did not make the right choice. He favored the local, but, when you are Prime Minister and with such national responsibility, you will look at the fate of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants who are on the edge of the precipice. »
“You shouldn’t have”
As the question session began on Tuesday afternoon, the chief magistrate of Pau necessarily expected a return of fever. “You should not have gone to Pau to retain a mandate, but to the crisis meeting at the Élysée to assume your new role,” stormed Mathilde Panot, leader of the LFI deputies in the Assembly, referring to “contempt”.
“It’s extremely simple,” replied François Bayrou, at the microphone in front of the benches of deserted ministers. I was at the crisis meeting with the president of the republic. I was there from the first to the last minute. Simply, I participated by video as the Minister of the Interior participated by video from Reunion Island. » François Bayrou was connected from the Pyrénées-Atlantiques prefecture, just before the council.
“There is a break that perhaps you do not feel between life in the provinces and the circle of powers in Paris”
“I have to tell you that Pau is in France,” continued the Mayor Prime Minister, arguing that if he were mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris or of Neuilly, the controversy would have been different. “There is a break that perhaps you do not feel between life in the provinces and the circle of powers in Paris. »
The shooting continued with Boris Vallaud for the PS or Steevy Gustave for the Ecologists. “Your place was not in Pau”, insisted the Landes socialist who studied at the Barthou high school, the Oloron MP Iñaki Echaniz applauding in his window. “While Mayotte mourns its dead and so many missing citizens, it is incomprehensible to us that you favored a municipal council rather than going there. This choice is binding on you. »
Indifference and contempt for the MP from Mayotte
François Bayrou stood up and responded to the warheads once again. “You say that the Government was not in Mayotte, that is not correct. There were two ministers, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Overseas Territories. And the President of the Republic announced that he would go to Mayotte. It is not customary for the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic to leave the national territory at the same time. » A little sentence that we can choose to read with the right or wrong glasses, depending on whether we remember that Mayotte is precisely a French department or whether we understand that François Bayrou is talking about the distance from the metropolis.
Even more grating were the words sent from the Indian Ocean by the MP for Mayotte, Estelle Youssouffa, and read by her leader of the Liot group at the Palais Bourbon. After a long introduction on the seriousness of the situation, she noted: “Mayotte is crying for help, Mayotte is in distress […]. Yet yesterday [lundi]while a crucial crisis meeting for Mayotte was being held, you preferred to chair the Pau municipal council. A choice that can evoke indifference and contempt for a population in danger. How can I justify this feeling of abandonment and absolute urgency to her? »
“I know very well that the art of pedagogy is the art of repetition, having practiced it for a long enough time,” François Bayrou reiterated in a comma. I repeat to you that I participated in the crisis meeting. As happens to many of us, I did it by video and this meeting was fruitful and precise in the decisions it took. »
In this avalanche of shots coming from the opposition, observers will have noticed that the National Rally did not seize the pole. A sign, perhaps, that Marine Le Pen’s party is not close to voting for censure. In this type of exercise, you have to know how to appreciate good news.
