François Bayrou is the new tenant in Matignon. The opportunity to return to the memorable sequence of the slap he gave to an 11-year-old child while he was a presidential candidate in 2002.
The 73-year-old boss and founder of MoDem, first ally of the Head of State and figure of the center, François Bayrou was appointed Prime Minister this Friday.
He will have the difficult task of forming a government capable of surviving the threat of censorship from a National Assembly without a majority bloc, and of having a budget adopted which France is currently deprived of for 2025.
“If you picked my pockets”
In the meantime, we remember the legendary slap from the mayor of Pau to a child from the town of Meinau in Alsace in 2002. Then candidate for the presidential election for the UDF (Union for French Democracy), François Bayrou went to the Alsatian city to discuss insecurity.
In a filmed sequence, while Mayor Fabienne Keller is the target of insults from a group of young people, François Bayrou at her side suddenly turns towards an 11-year-old child and coldly slaps him.
He then said to him: “You don't pick my pockets! Yes, you picked my pockets.”
He acted like a “family father”, according to him
The sequence had provoked a real national debate and François Bayrou had come under fire from criticism. The boss of MoDem subsequently tried to justify his action which he described as “without gravity” explaining that he had acted in “father of the family”. Concerning the teenager, he was sentenced in 2012 at the age of 21 to four months in prison by the Strasbourg criminal court for contempt and violence against police officers.
France
