The gentle music of the Republican Guard chamber orchestra accompanies the arrival of guests, as at the king’s court. There are the many regulars, who do not raise their heads to the gilding of the ceiling of the Elysée village hall, and the newcomers, who pull out their phones to immortalize the moment. The investiture ceremony of a President of the Republic is as much for the speeches delivered there as for his assembly, symbolic of the nature of a power.
In 2017, a crowd of strangers rushed to the palace in the wake of Emmanuel Macron, elected on a promise of renewal of political life. Five years later, the faces of the “reinvestiture” of the head of state, Saturday, May 7, are familiar, for the most part.
The former Presidents of the Republic, François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, stand side by side, in the front row; they pretend not to see each other, while the crowd of 450 guests watches them out of the corner of their eyes.
The former Prime Ministers Manuel Valls, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Edouard Philippe, rub shoulders with elected officials in shambles, whether they are majority executives (François Bayrou, Christophe Castaner, François Patriat, Patrick Mignola), local barons rallied to Macronie ( Christian Estrosi, Hubert Falco, Catherine Vautrin, Caroline Cayeux, Christophe Béchu), or figures from past five years, who come to smell the air of the new world (Marisol Touraine, Pierre Charon, Eric Woerth, Frédéric de Saint-Sernin, Elisabeth Guigou) .
Immutable Rite
The « mormons »this brigade of thirty-year-olds who accompanied the rise of Emmanuel Macron in 2017, enter as a group, as five years ago. A few members of the band – the former spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye, the former pen Sylvain Fort, and the former political adviser Jean-Marie Girier – have disappeared from the photograph, where only Stanislas Guerini, general delegate of the Republic on the move, Julien Denormandie, Minister of Agriculture, Cédric O, Secretary of State for Digital, Adrien Taquet, in charge of the family, or the communicator Ismaël Emelien.
Emmanuel Macron will stop for an emotional exchange with the parents of Samuel Paty
Re-elected almost two weeks ago, Emmanuel Macron does not seem in a hurry to step into his new mandate. It is still time to write the gesture of the previous one, with the presence “of people who counted in the history of the first five-year term”, according to the Elysée formula. The mayors of cities that hosted the great national debate, the day after the “yellow vests” movement, were invited. A midwife from the Timone hospital in Marseille, whom the head of state met during the Covid-19 crisis, is present, as is the president of the scientific council, Jean-François Delfraissy. The tenant of the Elysée will stop for an emotional exchange with the parents of Samuel Paty, assassinated in 2020 by a terrorist in front of his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines).
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