Olivier Babeau is president of the Sapiens Institute and, moreover, professor of management sciences at the University of Bordeaux. He recently published
The New Digital Disorder: How Digital Is Exploding Inequalities
(Buchet Chastel, 2020).
Political transparency is now the norm.
It is supposed to exorcise the distrust of citizens vis-à-vis those who lead them.
By exposing top officials, part of the broken link with citizens is supposed to be re-established.
Insufficient to ward off any suspicion of corruption, this transparency seems rather to stir up resentment.
The publication of the heritage of Eric Dupond-Moretti, current Minister of Justice, thus aroused a deluge of indignation.
Houses, apartments, watches and luxury cars, etc .: the list is impressive;
the outburst of criticism it unleashed is even more so.
Read also:
The unusual details of the government's real estate heritage
Where does the controversy come from?
The reason for this unveiling, let us remember, is simply to check that there is no enrichment during the mandate.
The High Authority for the transparency of public life, of which it is precisely the function, will ensure this.
Moreover, was this heritage acquired illegally or without the payment of the considerable corresponding taxes?
We trust Bercy to have controlled it.
So what?
What do we reproach our tenor of the bar who has become Keeper of the Seals?
But to be a "
nouveau riche
", quite simply.
Expression a thousand times written on social networks by those who think, by this qualifier alone, to have said enough.
Expression that actually says a lot about a French mentality that does not grow our country.
It does not matter, in the eyes of the slanderers, that the minister has divided his income by six by agreeing to return to government
In the court of opinion, unlike the assizes, doubt never benefits the accused.
In social networks, the trial is only dependent and the sentence is written in advance.
This is exactly, as we will have noticed, the way in which justice functions in sham democracy.
It does not matter, in the eyes of the slanderers, that the minister divided his income by six by agreeing to return to government.
When it comes to public engagement, sacrifices count for nothing.
The service to France should not only be free, it would also have to cost those who devote themselves to it.
Through obscure medieval reminiscences, we dream for our elites of asceticism and renouncing the pleasures of this world.
It's no longer just a matter of preventing prevarication, but of making sure they suffer.
To read also:
Olivier Babeau: "Eclipse of freedom"
Whatever one thinks of the minister, the lawyer or the person (it is permissible, moreover, to think well of them), his career commands respect.
A worker father who dies early.
A mother cleaning lady.
Two parents who could only bequeath to their son their intelligence, their courage and the values that shape a life.
It was a lot, of course.
And at the same time so little in a country where the one who leaves without heritage and without connections accumulates handicaps.
To succeed, Eric Dupond-Moretti could not count on birth.
And luck would not have been enough.
To navigate the world, it took tenacity, effort and daring.
In short, the qualities that we rightly salute in an entrepreneur.
If one of our leaders has succeeded in his life other than being elected, if he has other titles of glory than that of having been made a civil servant at 20, if he does not have to his asset the creation of a wicket or a phynance pump, he is suspect.
Suspect of freedom and independence.
It gives those at the base of the ladder a hope that does not go through the big night or victimization.
France, through the atavism of the old regime, respects more an imbecile who owes his fortune to inheritance than an intelligent person who has succeeded from nothing.
Jealousy of a servant who sees one of his family pass over to the masters, and who will hate him for that more than he hates them.
We are wary of the master, but at least he is in his place.
It's in order of things.
He is the hereditary enemy, but his presence allows mobilization against them.
On the other hand, the one who manages ("
the upstart
") to become a master through his work is guilty: he shows that the opposition between bosses and employees is not the unsurpassable horizon of society and that the effort pays.
It gives those at the base of the ladder a hope that does not go through the big night or through victimization.
To read also:
Olivier Babeau: "France of Black Friday, it is France which calculates the month to the nearest 10 euros"
This is what we reproach, fundamentally, Eric Dupond-Moretti: through his career, he is the attorney of a trial never yet heard, that of our old obsession for the class struggle.
