Every weekend, franceinfo answers social questions, and today we are talking about the new government, since we have known its structure since Thursday evening, the new government of Gabriel Attal. At 34, the youngest Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic is not necessarily the youngest member of the government. Marie Lebec, for example, Minister of Relations with Parliament, is 33 years old.
franceinfo: This youth, Jean Viard, has been highlighted a lot since the appointment of Gabriel Attal. Do you think this is relevant? Does it really matter?
Jean Viard: First, I remind you that Napoleon was consul at 30 years old. I think that above all, it makes others look old. What we are doing is making Emmanuel Macron a reference grandpa in society. And so there is a gap between a young person and then indeed, the others who remain in important positions, and who basically are skills, economics, law, etc. And I think that’s important, it’s the couple that works.
We have the president and his ministers, and I was going to say on the edge, a combat courier who is a young, dynamic man, who in five months was brilliant at National Education, but that still did not changed our lives again. And so this light horse – if it was in a military combat under Napoleon – he is responsible for leading the attacks, the counterattacks. He will lead the fight in a society where something must be clearly understood: it is the crisis of modern democracies, it is the conflict between representative democracy where the law takes time, because democracy takes a long time, these are palavers, these are negotiations.
However, digital democracy is a democracy of the moment. Look at Donald Trump, he says: If I am elected, the war in Ukraine, in 15 days, it will be over. And what’s more, it’s not impossible. He cuts all the budgets, he calls Putin, he deals, etc. So, we are in a deep contradiction between democracy which is a world of talk, and then the digital world which is a world of the moment. So there are two powers. There is the president and his great ministers, and a light horse who understood – but Nicolas Sarkozy had already understood it – look at the abaya, knock, it’s banned in 24 hours. The baccalaureate is out of place.
So I think that we are on one side in this logic of ultra speed, which is that of modern societies, which is that of the extreme right, which is that of the populists, who immediately tell you yes, straight away, we do. The immigrants, presto, we put them on the boats – we won’t put them on the boat, but that’s what we say. And basically, democracy seeks a double speed of racing, and there, we have two players who are not at the same speed, and we will see how it works.
What you say Jean Viard also echoes the first words of Emmanuel Macron, to these new ministers during the first Council of Ministers. Yesterday he asked for results, solidarity, and speed from the new members of the government. Speed and youth, you said, made some people look old. Does that still raise the question of the French perception of youth in politics?
The people who vote in this country tend to be older people.
And young people in politics especially appeal to old people?
Basically, it’s as if our children are in power. But we think like that, I can see at my age…
The ideal son-in-law, the model son, the model daughter…
So ! So basically, it’s our children who are realizing their lives, that’s what’s going on in our heads. In fact, older people like the dynamic of young people, because it’s their youth, it reminds them of 68, the 70s, Giscard d’Estaing, there were young people there too. President Giscard d’Estaing, when he was elected, he was not quite a kid like President Macron, but he was still also a young man, especially compared to De Gaulle, to Pompidou who was dead illness etc.
I think the old people are satisfied, and the young people, if I’m being direct, they don’t care. Young people, they are engaged in ecological battles, engaged against a highway, even in solidarity, they are actors of the political immediate. And the elders are long-term players, and they will vote.