Prime Minister for 5 days, François Bayrou accumulates blunders (videos)

One slap, three presidential elections, Keeper of the Seals for 34 days: a look back at the career of François Bayrou in four notable events

A return trip to Pau in the middle of the crisis in Mayotte

Making a return trip to Pau and only attending a crisis meeting by videoconference is not acceptable within the National Assembly.

“You should not have gone to Pau to retain a mandate, but to the crisis meeting at the Élysée to assume your new role,” launched the head of the La France insoumise deputies, Mathilde Panot, when her socialist counterpart , Boris Vallaud, criticized him for having also taken advantage of it to promote “cumulative mandates”.

In the morning, the President of the Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, even said that she would have “preferred that the Prime Minister, instead of taking a plane to Pau, took the plane to Mamoudzou”, the capital from Mayotte.

François Bayrou justified himself by invoking the need not to “separate the province and the circle of powers in Paris”, one of his hobby horses. “Pau is in France (…) I was also in my place as a citizen,” he pleaded.

Mayotte, not the national territory?

This gaffe is not the only one made by the new Prime Minister. To justify his absence in Mayotte, while President Macron is going there this Thursday, he indicated that “it is not customary for the president and the Prime Minister to leave the national territory at the same time.” But Mayotte is a French territory. New outcry. This time on social networks.

“He still looks a little lost” when he “said Pau is France, it’s not Paris,” judged Cyrielle Chatelain for Les Écologues. “He seemed to discover that Mayotte was a French territory,” added his colleague Sandrine Rousseau.

Very complicated beginnings for Bayrou.