There was really no tomorrow to this March 8, 2017. ” Come with me ! Yes, come », had asked the candidate Emmanuel Macron by inviting his wife to go on stage, at the Antoine theater, during one of his last meetings in Paris. Brigitte Macron had joined him, hesitant. At the time, the future president intended to give an official role to the one who accompanies him, in life as in the exercise of power. “Paid by the Republic, no. Having a role, a real status, a real ability to do, yes”he assured, in the footsteps of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who was the first to assign his wife Anne-Aymone an unprecedented role under the Ve Republic, going so far as to give him the floor during wishes to the French for 1975. Emmanuel Macron had, finally, given up creating this particular status, which was too unpopular.
“I wore the uniform as a student”
In 2023, Brigitte Macron still has no status. But she has an opinion. Opinions on current topics that she likes to share. “She doesn’t want to be a potiche”, we underline at the Elysée. In an interview published Thursday, January 12 in The Parisian, the wife of the Head of State therefore speaks on the occasion of the “Yellow Pieces” operation that she sponsors and takes the opportunity to address political issues in front of a dozen or so readers. About school, one of the priorities of Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term, the first lady does not hesitate to show off « pour » wearing the uniform. “I wore the uniform as a student, fifteen years of navy blue skirt, navy blue sweater. I lived it well”she said, pleading for “a simple and not sad outfit”.
Six days earlier, the Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, had nevertheless been categorical towards one of the totems held up by the reactionary right which reviled him, explaining that he did not want “open this debate”. “I don’t want any law on this. Imposing the uniform on all students is a no”he swept on BFM-TV, January 4, while adding that an establishment could establish it locally.
“It’s not calculated”
“All interference is never pleasant”, do we confide in the entourage of Pap Ndiaye. Discreet, little media, the minister differs from his predecessor, Jean-Michel Blanquer, a former conservative rector, whom the wife of the President of the Republic particularly appreciated. Brigitte Macron would she try to guide the novice in politics? “Brigitte has her convictions, from the start, do we minimize at the cabinet of the rue de Grenelle. She responded spontaneously. Emmanuel Macron does not send him on commissioned service to disavow his own minister. And the minister does not need to ask the opinion of the first lady, who has no status in our Republic, to know that a subject must be taken up. » When questioned, the Head of State’s team did not wish to speak. “It is not calculated, she did not go to war against Pap, she is not in command of the President of the Republic”we defend in the entourage of Brigitte Macron.
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