"My God, what a misfortune! Oh no, but wait, it's a nightmare! "Last May, on the set of" Big Heads ", on RTL, Roselyne Bachelot swore that it would not be repeated there. It was at the time when she was still a TV columnist on LCI, far from imagining that her turn would just be chosen by the government as an asset popularity of a new government. At 73, she is propelled Minister of Culture, back in the big political bath after a long detour of eight years in the media (D8, Europe 1, "the Big Heads", LCI since the start of the 2017 school year).
"Culture, she has always dreamed of it!" "Slipped one of his relatives, recalling that the lover of opera and opera (she wrote a book in 2013 on Giuseppe Verdi) had tried, in vain, to land this job in 2007 with François Fillon . She then obtained the Ministry of Health and Sports.
But it is indeed for having exercised this function that his name has returned for several weeks in public debate. In a country traumatized by the lack of masks, its management of the H1N1 crisis in 2009 is now cited as an example. So at the helm in rue de Ségur, the minister ordered 94 million doses of vaccines, 195 million euros in masks for a disease that nevertheless spared France (342 deaths).
PODCAST. From H1N1 to coronavirus, the rehabilitation of the former Minister of Health
At the time, the sneers burst out, especially since her past as a medical representative for a pharmaceutical laboratory harbored suspicions of collusion. But the reproaches turned, in the light of the Covid, into as much praise. In an Odoxa survey of March 2020, it points to 44% popularity, far ahead of Professors Raoult (43%) and Salomon (35%).
A character at odds with that of Castex
"I thought that they would do me justice after my death, stroke of luck, I waited only ten years", she had fun last spring on RMC. With her natural banter, her humor, often cheeky, and her colorful dresses, Roselyne Bachelot also allows the President of the Republic to display a colorful profile, far from the technocratic one of Jean Castex, whom she knows well otherwise. Hadn't she presented herself in 2008 to the Council of Ministers wearing pink fangs, in accordance with her promise made before the Beijing Olympics if France reached 40 medals?
A big mouth, not very new world, which is not always that friends. "Macron could have brought Giscard into government as long as we are there!" Pokes one of his enemies. Last week, heard by the parliamentary commission of inquiry of the National Assembly on the management of the coronavirus, it scratched the "doctors who do not have masks in their office, who do not build up a stock", immediately provoking indignation among generalists. An image of gaffeuse, popularized by his puppet of Guignols, repeating tirelessly: "Rhôôô la boulette…"
Political Newsletter
Every day, the political news seen by Le ParisienI'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to allow you to receive our news and commercial offers. Find out more
VIDEO. Roselyne Bachelot: "But what is this infantilized country?"
Clumsy, perhaps, but an expert on the political scene. Daughter of Gaullist deputy Jean Narquin, the Chiraquienne took over from her father in the Assembly in 1988 before going on to ministerial portfolios. Always on the right, but not on the right all. His positions in 1999 in favor of the Pacs detonated and gave him a special place in his political family. In 2012, she settled her accounts with Nicolas Sarkozy by publishing "A feu et à sang" (Ed. Flammarion), a critical account of the "rightist" campaign of the UMP candidate.
Even if it supports François Fillon during the primary of the right, the rupture is consummated with the right, and the Sarkozysts in particular. "I imagine the face of the cultivators when they see Bachelot arriving who makes profession of gamblers", laughs one of them. "It is not because there will be Roselyne that it will be a government of big heads!" Adds, cruelly, Brice Hortefeux. "She's offbeat but very professional," replies one of her friends. This Monday evening, the transfer of power with his predecessor, Franck Riester, was already done.
