This Saturday, May 7, 2022, Emmanuel Macron’s investiture ceremony is being held, a few days after his re-election on April 24 against his far-right opponent Marine Le Pen. with his party Renaissance – new name of La République en Marche – the French leader faces another five years that promise to be intense with pension reform, purchasing power and climate change, as the war unfolds in Ukraine and that the world is trying to cope with the Covid-19 virus.
Faced with all these challenges, those who are struggling to find their Prime Minister can count on a woman, the one and only: Brigitte Macron. Between them, it’s fusion, the citizens will have understood it well after a first mandate where the lovers have not stopped exchanging marks of affection. Married since 2007, they ignored their age difference (twenty-four years) in front of their two families as in front of all French men and women. Symbol of their union so solid for fifteen years, the alliance of their marriage but not only. Emmanuel Macron wears another jewel on his right hand. The magazine Gala returned to the origin of this precious ring that he often triturated during his moments of nervousness: it was offered to him by the first lady “during the internship of the young enarque at Nigeria“.
Jean-Marc Simon, then French ambassador to Nigeria, confided in The Express on the internship of the young Emmanuel Macron in 2002, he was then 24 years old: “I saw disembarking, at the beginning of 2002, a fresh young guy, clean on him, small fitted gray suit. In short, the physique of the ideal son-in-law. He was brilliant on all subjects. Spontaneous, loved by everyone, from the Nigerian policeman on duty outside the chancellery to my first adviser. With exceptional listening skills and empathy. No doubt he made this choice to approach a continent he knew little about. And, truth be told, Nigeria was not the easiest gateway to Africa. In two years, I haven’t seen a French minister pass by… He didn’t seem to me to be a prisoner of any certainty. He was there to observe and understand.”
An avalanche of praise for the one who twenty years later will become President of the Republic for a second time with 58.5% of the vote. Jean-Marc Simon must now tell himself that he had already understood everything about the brilliant future that awaited Emmanuel Macron: “At the end of his stay, I readily said that I could part with all my collaborators, from my right-hand man to the caretaker, including the consul, the accountant and the press officer, to keep only one: him. And that he would do all the work on his own, and very well.“A therefore significant stay during which he was able to keep a symbolic link with the one he loves, through this first alliance.