Jean Castex, a sort of deconfined “Swiss army knife”, whose accent may have lent itself to good nature

by time news

2024-04-13 13:36:08

SPITTING IMAGE – For a long time in the shadows, at the Elysée and Matignon, Jean Castex appeared as if he had come straight from his native Gers, like a devil out of his box, with this accent to cut with a knife, to give you want to buy his foie gras at the Lectoure market. A real jackpot for Emmanuel Macron, who sees in this technocrat with false good-nature only an “effective” person devoid of presidential ambition. A disappointment for the French who will suffer his restrictions, that of a good little soldier devoid of scruples, trading his reputation as an “effective” manager for that of a criticizable and criticized manager, a real stupid torturer of the Covid epidemic, with crazy injunctions… sit, stand, masked, don’t move…

Upon leaving ENA in 1991, Jean Castex was an auditor at the Court of Auditors. A graduate of Sciences Po Paris and already indoctrinated, holding a master’s degree in public law, he was promoted in 1994 to the position of referendum advisor. In 1996, the Gersois left Paris to settle in the South-East of France and pursue a career, a career as a civil servant! He will be director of Health and Social Affairs in the Var department, then secretary general of the Vaucluse prefecture, and finally president of the Alsace Regional Chamber of Accounts until 2005.

“Effective” in the shadows, janissary in the sun

Jean Castex returned to Paris in 2006 and entered the apparatus. In the shadows, as director of Hospitalization and Organization of Care, at the Ministry of Solidarity and Social Cohesion. Already with his little finger on the seam of his pants, he takes part in the restructuring of the health system with the establishment of new financing criteria for health establishments, such as the notion of objectives and profitability as well as the rationalization of costs .

Jean Castex gradually climbed the ranks and launched into elective politics. He is chief of staff to Xavier Bertrand, then Minister of Health where he did not shine, under Nicolas Sarkozy, then, from 2008, secretary general of the UMP, of which he is a member. A winning membership since he returned to the south-east of France and was elected mayor of Prades in the 2008 municipal elections, then regional councilor of Languedoc-Roussillon in 2010. At the end of this year, he was appointed councilor in social affairs in the president’s office, a position he held until the end of Sarkozy’s mandate at the Elysée in 2012.

Jean Castex remains distant from the Elysée and its ministries during the mandate of François Hollande. He failed to become deputy for the 3rd constituency of the Pyrénées-Orientales in 2012 but managed to get elected in 2015 as a departmental councilor in the canton of the Catalan Pyrenees. The crossing of the desert ends with the election of Emmanuel Macron. Jean Castex has already left the UMP to join the Republicans and is appointed interministerial delegate to the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris and president of the National Sports Agency, the start of a predicted fiasco.

Credits: ARA

He was, at that time, mayor of Prades, where he was credited with authoritarian and even tyrannical outbursts, departmental councilor of the Pyrénées-Orientales and president of the ANS, in other words, one of the best paid civil servants in France. During the pandemic, he will be behind the deconfinement under the orders of the Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, which earned him the nickname “Mr. deconfinement”. When the head of government resigns, Macron’s choice is quickly made…

Jean Castex, unknown until now, has the ideal profile. “Stakhanovist without much self-esteem”, “untangler” of problems and problems, focused on health and work issues, he is described as a “Swiss army knife” and is credited with “the first pandemic plan”. But the mayor of Prades is above all a technician under orders (the cars will leave on time) who will not overshadow President Macron, barely two years before the 2022 presidential election.

Castex, the Janusian figure of Macronie

He was the subject of an investigation by the Perpignan public prosecutor’s office for violations of the Environmental Code and the Labor Code in his capacity as mayor, but the investigation was quickly abandoned following his appointment. we don’t attack those who climb.

He leaves the Republicans, gives up his positions at the town hall of Prades and at the Pyrénées-Orientales Departmental Council which is blowing, and then inherits the pandemic as Prime Minister, whose experience is “praised” at the Ministry of Health. The falsehoods -not piling up: hostile measures, hazardous declarations, a bill authorizing the extension of the state of health emergency. “Mr. deconfinement”, of which we recall the “less rigid” management of the health crisis compared to his predecessor, becomes “Mr. confinement”. He introduces new restrictions, strengthens confinement and the curfew, and even invites himself to the French table at Christmas to limit the number of people and old people.

In September 2020, he was the subject of a complaint before the Court of Justice of the Republic from an association of COVID victims, which accused the government of “navigating by sight” in the face of the pandemic, without “any strategy of struggle”.

Despite the absence of a real second wave, the head of Government persists in the extension of the state of emergency, in force since February 2021, by even proposing a bill establishing a state of health crisis, calling for ‘to the vaccination of children between 5 and 11 years old, as a “necessity”. Well before a certain Olivier Véran, then Minister of Health, he multiplied contradictory, controversial, even improbable assertions, as when he intoned that “the immense majority” of people hospitalized are not vaccinated, that a fully vaccinated person could not be contaminated or when he announced in a televised speech and in a tone as serious as it was solemn, the ban on consumption… standing up, in bars and cafes, like Fernandel.

He transforms the health pass into a vaccination pass and also attacks unvaccinated people, on whom “we should clearly continue to impose constraints”, while the populations of neighboring countries are making a “return to normal ” from the beginning of 2022.

Are we done with him?

A few weeks after Macron’s re-election, Jean Castex, whose popularity was declining, resigned and handed Matignon over to Elisabeth Borne. The president wants to see him run the RATP, the Paris transport authority, well in the shadow of its tunnels. His appointment raises questions about the limits of the control of conflicts of interest, after the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) expressed reservations. The HATVP also requires him to “refrain, for three years, from any approach” to his former collaborators in the government in order to “prevent any risk of calling into question the independence and well-known neutrality of administration”.

A farewell to politics or a goodbye? At the Elysée, he is among the cards to play against the far right in 2027, alongside Edouard Phillipe, who far outdistances him in the polls against Marine Le Pen. He, faced with the difficulties of the RATP as well as the challenge of Transport in anticipation of the Paris Olympic Games, does not wish to “be resettled”, the French are grateful to him.

If he has rarely been on the front line outside of subjects linked to the epidemic, it was during his mandate that the “global security” law or even that against separatism were passed. A Castex at the Elysée? To force the French into a “containment” orchestrated in Macronie or to deconfine?

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