It's low profile, studious but without dazzling, that Manuel Valls returned to the Bourbon Palace this week. The ex-Prime Minister can savor the adoption on Wednesday almost unanimously of his bill on Mayotte, in an assembly which has so far saved it.
The last time Manuel Valls spoke in the hemicycle, he was a deputy. It was October 2, 2018 and he said goodbye to French politics, leaving his headquarters to run for the town hall of Barcelona.
In the spans, “good riddling” signs were brandished by rebellious deputies, as a starting pot for this former socialist prime minister, passed under macronist fold, and hated by the left.
There followed a long crossing of the desert, started with its defeat in Catalan land, and which continued with the bitter failure of his re -election as a deputy in the French legislative elections of 2022.
Monday, Manuel Valls made his comeback in the arena of the Assembly, in the costume of Minister of Overseas, who came to defend the first text of the government of François Bayrou.
– “indifferent” –
On this occasion, the deputies “discovered” a “new Manuel Valls”, far from the statements to “the cookie cutter”, to the “divisive personality” and to the “sliced positions”, to which the political class was used to, according to Several elected officials interviewed by AFP.
During the examination of this text adopted almost unanimously on Wednesday, “I discovered an extremely strong and technical minister, peaceful and pedagogue, very attentive to parliamentarians, on the left and on the right”, Observes the macronist deputy Pierre Cazeneuve.
“Those who have historical political enmity towards him must be annoyed in the face of the quality he has been showing for a few days,” he thinks.
Within the socialist group, few deputies agree to comment on the beginnings of Manuel Valls with an open face.
Their chef, Boris Vallaud, says he is “indifferent” to this return, the “betrayal” of Mr. Valls being old.
Manuel Valls sat ten years on the benches of the socialists, as deputy of Essonne, until 2012, before becoming Minister then Prime Minister of François Hollande (who now sits as opposition deputy in front of him). He joined macronists after his defeat in socialist primary in early 2017.
-“It hurts me to say it, but Valls, it is good,” said a socialist deputy to AFP.
Even the rebellious deputy Aurélie found, who chairs the Committee on Economic Affairs, where the text on Mayotte was first examined, concedes with the lips: “He was rather part of a constructive approach” so far.
His colleague Aurélien Taché, finds him “particularly wise”, saying he was surprised to find an “almost erased minister”, who “flees the questions”, instead of “to fight, and to raise the glove” when it is attacked.
– “Get out of wood” –
On the right, a deputy is surprised that he was “not more abused” by the left. During the question session of the government, where the ministers are regularly heckled, Manuel Valls was rather spared on Tuesday.
He responded to an rebellious deputy about the water crisis in Reunion. “The situation is so difficult at the moment in the overseas territories” that no one “can afford to sulk” or to have “moods” on the grounds that it is Manuel Valls, notes the deputy Socialist Philippe Naillet.
Especially since in overseas, the appointment of this former Prime Minister, third in the protocol rank, was rather well received.
“Having someone from Manuel Valls's caliber is what the ultramarines are waiting for,” according to the president of the Mayotte Departmental Council Ben Issa Ousseni, who salutes “his availability” in the exchanges, but hopes more on the plan of Action.
He is eagerly awaited on the next Mayotte law announced for March, where the fight against immigration should constitute a “primordial component”, in his words.
“In March, when all the most foul -smelling proposals will arrive from the right -wing benches of the hemicycle, he will no longer be able to hide,” thinks the rebellious deputy Aurélien Taché. “Manuel Valls will have to get out of the wood”.
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