2023-11-20 07:00:15
One, always punctual, is early. The other arrives, out of breath, a quarter of an hour late. Aquilino Morelle, 61, displays a chic and relaxed style (corduroy jacket, open collar, high-top sneakers) while Henri Guaino, 66, assumes a good-natured classicism (beige suit, Hermès tie, black loafers). The first jokes, mischievous, amused by the circumstance. The second, both more tense and darker, sketches furtive smiles which we fear will turn into a grimace if the discussion takes a turn that annoys him.
They exercised the same function under two Presidents of the Republic, with the title of “special advisor” of Nicolas Sarkozy for Henri Guaino (2007-2012) and of “political advisor” by François Hollande (2012-2014) for Aquilino Morelle, because “a normal president cannot have a special advisor”, had justified the socialist president. They also occupied the same office, the corner lounge, the most beautiful in the Elysée. Both fought to keep him, Henri Guaino threatening to resign, Aquilino Morelle confronting the chief of staff. Sitting in the lounge of a Parisian hotel, where The world brought them together, Guaino laughs: “We have the same character! »
Aquilino Morelle and Henri Guaino in Paris, Tuesday November 14, 2023. KAMIL ZIHNIOGLU FOR “THE WORLD”
If one advised a right-wing president, and the other, a left-wing president, they both have the same sovereignist ethos – Guaino never liked the word and Morelle finds it “caricatural” among those who would like to disqualify them by presenting them as “scrupulous” focused on the past. Having never believed in happy globalization, they relish the return to favor, since the Covid-19 crisis, of the concept of sovereignty, as well as the promises to reindustrialize the country. Both voted « non » in the referendums on Europe in 1992 and 2005 and judge that the Treaty of Lisbon of 2008, which endorsed the draft European Constitution rejected three years earlier by the French, “was experienced as a democratic disaster” and has “fueled the push of the RN [Rassemblement national] ».
The two ex-Elysian advisors, who have since joined their original body – the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs for Morelle, the Court of Auditors for Guaino – have each just published a book. The first (The Parable of the Blind, Grasset, 287 p., 20.90 euros) devoted to the RN, to try to understand the reasons for its growth, while worrying about the resignation which seems to have won over the French in the face of the increasingly consistent hypothesis according to him, of his victory in four years. Henri Guaino (The seventh time the walls fellLe Rocher, 378 p., 22.90 euros), to analyze the fracturing of Western societies which have believed for too long that their model was invulnerable.
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