In the very last hours, it was Carole Delga, president of the Occitanie region, who said she was not a candidate for anything, and not for sale. On the right, François Baroin, whose name is circulating, has instructed his relatives to repeat that he is not interested in entering government, even if it is to become its leader. To tell you the truth, a number of them tell us in private that they have been approached, but that this time it will be without them. To wonder if ultimately, Minister, it still makes you dream.
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Hence this question: does integrating the government still have an interest? There are still a few prestigious posts: Interior, Armed Forces, Foreign Affairs, Economy and Finance. The Work / Social pole at a pinch, Ecology too.
For the rest, who can name, just like that, the forty ministers of the last Jean Castex government? With the health crisis, it is true, a certain number have been silenced, when the floor was reserved for the most essential ministers. Here’s a point: some, like ordinary supermarket shelves, are more essential than others. The personalities of civil society, most of whom were invisible during the five-year term, are now being criticized for their uselessness, or their lack of incarnation. As if minister, it was above all a sound and light show.
Who wants to enter the government?
This was confirmed in a way by the Senate investigation report on the use of consulting firms. The minister is no longer even the super head of an administration, since the administrations, themselves powerless, see part of their prerogatives outsourced. Let’s be clear: if you are young and have a successful private career, you have no interest in going to government. If you are an elected official at the head of a region or an important city, with the means at your disposal, you have no interest in going to government. Or, if not, you have to have the sense of the State damned to the body, to throw yourself into an arena where there are only blows to take.
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What should be done to restore luster to this position? Without a doubt: give more human resources to the incumbents with more furnished cabinets and above all give it a political meaning. This is the opposite of what Emmanuel Macron has done so far, gradually dismissing all those who have political support – Gérard Collomb, Christophe Castaner, Edouard Philippe, François Bayrou – for personalities with expert profiles – a lawyer in Justice, a former teacher in Education, and so on. Or by blaming those who have tried to organize the balance of power – Barbara Pompili at Ecology, for example – for precisely doing politics.
There is an enormous risk in devitalizing the office of minister. It is to reduce politics to the rank of leisure for the wealthy, civil servants guaranteed to find their original bodies, personalities from civil society at the end of their careers who have nothing to lose… Or a handful of privileged people with a financial base large enough to afford the thrill of a passage in ministry. That is to say, basically, anything but the faithful representation of France.