Just four days after his appointment, François Bayrou is at the center of a controversy. On Tuesday, the new prime minister defended to deputies his decision to attend the Pau city council the day before, of which he wishes to remain mayor, and to participate only by videoconference in a crisis meeting on Mayotte, devastated by the passage of cyclone Chido . He believes that “we have no right to separate the province and the circle of powers in Paris”.
“Pau is in France (…) I presided over the municipal council of my city from 7pm to 11pm. I believe that, in doing so, I also found myself in my place as a citizen and I intend to defend this idea that citizenship is not divided between ‘being in Paris and fulfilling your responsibilities as a citizen on the ground,’ added the Prime Minister in response to a question from the leader of the LFI deputies, Mathilde Panot.
🔴🗣 “Mr Bayrou, the Mayotte disaster is not natural, it is political.
In this context you should not have gone to Pau to maintain a mandate. Contempt is felt all the more harshly when there is suffering.
Our hearts are completely with… pic.twitter.com/26tNWZBFJx
— La France Insoumise #NFP at the Assembly (@FiAssemblee) December 17, 2024
“You shouldn’t have gone to Pau to hold a warrant,” he said. Boris Vallaud, president of the PS group in the Assembly, also estimates that the place for Matignon’s new tenant “is not in Pau”. And he added: “The urgency was not the return to the accumulation of mandates.”
The president’s visit in the next few days
On several occasions, during the session of questions to the government, François Bayrou justified his choice. “There was the Minister of the Interior and Foreign Affairs who yesterday was (Monday)” on the archipelago, he insists, also recalling that Emmanuel Macron will go there in the next few hours.
It is not “customary for the prime minister and the president to leave the national territory together”, continued the head of the MoDem, before adding that they currently have the “responsibility of proposing a new government”.
This decision drew criticism from all political quarters, including his own camp. That same morning, the president of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet did not spare Matignon’s tenant, specifying that she would “prefer that the prime minister, instead of taking a plane to Pau, took the plane to Mamoudzou”, she stated the president of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet. capital of the devastated territory.
#François #Bayrou #defends #presence #Pau #separate #province #circle #powers #Paris