The macronists had ended the year 2019 with a painful start at the top of the state.
Jean-Paul Delevoye, ephemeral high commissioner in charge of pensions within the government, resigned in December, in the midst of a conflict over pension reform, after having failed to report ten mandates in his declaration of interests.
Read also: For Benjamin Griveaux, the post-Paris era has begun
The prelude to an
annus horribilis
for figures in the entourage of Emmanuel Macron, with ambitions showered a few months later by their disappointments in the municipal elections.
Benjamin Griveaux, Agnès Buzyn, Gérard Collomb ...
Le Figaro
traces the fall of these leading walkers, now deprived of a national role at the end of a harsh year 2020.
● Benjamin Griveaux, the accursed candidacy of a historical macronist
His fate was shattered one morning, February 14, 2020. With his face closed, sobs in his voice, Benjamin Griveaux announced that day he was giving up the race for mayor of Paris, after the broadcast of a video and messages of a sexual nature on social networks.
“
This decision is costing me but my priorities are very clear.
It is first and foremost my family, ”
explains this early hiker in a short speech.
A thunderclap in the political class, which immediately sends him unanimous support.
The unprecedented conclusion of a chaotic campaign.
Read also: Benjamin Griveaux, the shattered fate of an ambitious man
Retired in his native Saône-et-Loire during the first confinement, and again become a member of the 270 Walkers of the National Assembly, the former government spokesperson made a discreet return last summer.
Far from the cameras and interviews, which he still refuses, the elected official has reinvested Twitter and has been entrusted by the Prime Minister with a parliamentary mission on feeding young people.
As for the activist Piotr Pavlenski, at the origin of the distribution of the video, he is still indicted and released under judicial supervision, with his partner Alexandra de Taddeo.
● Agnès Buzyn, the severe failure of an appeal
She nevertheless assured to launch out
"to win".
This February 16, 2020, Agnès Buzyn announces resigning from the Ministry of Health to replace Benjamin Griveaux at short notice, in the race for mayor of Paris.
A first application in the form of last resort for macronists.
But his campaign quickly took on the appearance of an ordeal.
Weakened at the end of the first round of March (17.26% of the vote), the doctor sows trouble in an interview with
Le Monde
: organizing municipal elections in the midst of an epidemic was a
"masquerade"
, she explains, assuring that his tears, during the handover of power, did not betray his emotion but his fears vis-à-vis the health tsunami that was looming.
His statement provoked an explosion.
Read also: The end of a long ordeal for Agnès Buzyn
Four months and one confinement later, at the end of a campaign that looks like an ordeal, the walker fails, on June 28, 2020, to win any seat on the Council of Paris.
Her Stations of the Cross led her behind her rivals Anne Hidalgo and Rachida Dati, in third position in the capital, with 13.04% of the vote.
Agnès Buzyn will even give up, in September, her seat as councilor of the 17th arrondissement of the capital.
Presented at the start of the five-year term as a promising new face of Macronie, the former Minister of Health, who had already given up on launching the Europeans of 2019, ends the year 2020 without a function or mandate.
But with his found white coat of hematologist.
● Gérard Collomb, a Lyon baron defeated in his stronghold
He released the prey for the shade.
Gérard Collomb had preferred to run for the all-powerful metropolis of Lyon, rather than remain in the strategic Ministry of the Interior.
Result, this first support of Emmanuel Macron finds himself today without national or local power.
Defeated in his stronghold, the Lyon baron was relegated to fourth position behind his competitors on March 15, the evening of the first round of the metropolitan elections.
Read also: When Gérard Collomb lectures the Greens and a few others ...
The former mayor of Lyon did not even lead his electoral campaign to its end, preferring to withdraw before the second round, in favor of an unexpected “anti-Green front” formed with Les Républicains.
Without success.
Now elected opposition, he strives to scrap against the duo EELV Grégory Doucet-Bruno Bernard, two environmentalists at the head of the town hall and the metropolis of Lyon.
And this at the end of a Collomb era of almost twenty years.
