AExpected for four days, announced Friday, May 20, the composition of Elisabeth Borne’s government would have been considered unimaginative if a disruptive element, coming from civil society, had not slipped in. Barely appointed Minister of National Education and Youth, the historian Pap Ndiaye monopolized the attention, focused the debates, triggered the first political contests, to the point of eclipsing the twenty-six other personalities – ministers, ministers delegates and secretaries of state – invested at the same time as him.
A graduate in history, a specialist in the United States and minorities, the academic, of Franco-Senegalese origin, is a pioneer, in France, of research on racial discrimination. It was enough for his appointment to be interpreted as a disavowal of what his predecessor, Jean-Michel Blanquer, had embodied, holding a classic republican line and destroyer of “Islamo-leftism”.
His appointment, while national education is one of the major reform projects of the next five-year term, is a strong signal. First in the direction of teachers, blocked for months in a difficult relationship with Jean-Michel Blanquer. Then in the direction of a part of the youth who feels discriminated against and with whom he hopes to become the symbol “meritocracy and diversity”. Creating the alchemy likely to put the heavy educational machine back in motion, encouraging it to seek effective means of reducing inequalities, remains a challenge, however, at a time when the institution, plagued by doubt, is going through a crisis of vocations without previous.
A political signal
A large part of the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the lead, welcomed the appointment of Pap Ndiaye, the right was worried about it, the far right defended it, accusing the academic of being “an assumed indigenist”, which is strictly false. On the contrary, his peers praise his spirit of measure, his ability, in debates, to frame emotions and his unwavering republican commitment on a line that could be summed up as follows: neither denial nor repentance.
For the time being, the signal is intended above all to be political: after having borrowed from Jean-Luc Mélenchon the concept of “ecological planning”, the President of the Republic continues to hunt on the lands of the left, because it is from this side that the threat is the strongest in view of the June legislative elections. However, this does not prevent him from consolidating in sovereign or strategic positions a certain number of heavyweights from the right: Bruno Le Maire in the economy, Gérald Darmanin in the interior, Eric Dupond-Moretti in justice, despite his indictment for illegal taking of interests and its execrable relations with the unions of magistrates.
In a world situation that continues to darken, the premium goes to know-how with the appointment to the Quai d’Orsay of a diplomat, Catherine Colonna, who worked for a long time with Jacques Chirac. The realization of the ecological transition falls, under the control of Elisabeth Borne, to two women, Agnès Pannier-Runacher and Amélie de Montchalin, more famous for their efficiency than for their ecological fiber. A certain number of young macronists who have proven themselves, such as Gabriel Attal or Clément Beaune, are promoted. In the end, the government architecture sums up quite well the way in which the President of the Republic intends to conduct the electoral battle: by limiting risk-taking to a minimum.