Macron follows in Mitterrand's footsteps

An intruder slipped into the family photo.

Difficult to dismiss, it is the President of the Republic.

So, willy-nilly, the Socialists have made room for Emmanuel Macron in front of François Mitterrand's family vault in Jarnac.

It has been twenty-five years since the former socialist president disappeared.

The year 2021 also coincides with the 20th anniversary of his election and the abolition of the death penalty.

It is therefore a year of tributes which opened on Friday in the cemetery of Jarnac, in the presence of about twenty relatives of the former president, including François Hollande and Ségolène Royal, former minister Hubert Védrine, members of his family, including his son Gilbert Mitterrand, but also the current first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure.

To read also:

“The legacy of President François Mitterrand is still alive.

His two seven-year terms continue to irrigate our collective history, ”

tweeted the Head of State before the ceremony.

The Socialists accuse him half-heartedly of attempting to capture an inheritance.

They have seen it done before.

To salute

Georges Pompidou's

for the 50th anniversary of his accession to the Élysée Palace in 2019. To pay tribute to Jacques Chirac after his death the same year, this statesman

To praise the

of General de Gaulle for the 50th anniversary of his death in 2020. Recall

reformer of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing after her death last year.

So, inevitably, with François Mitterrand, the Socialists are wary.

By observing Emmanuel Macron, it did not escape them that he sometimes tried to mimic their great man.

A way of resting his hands on one another during televised interviews, an Elysian desk with tricolor bands inspired by that of his distant predecessor, friendly signals addressed to relatives of the former president like Michel Charasse ... the Socialists, there is still maneuver in the air.

Moreover, this year, Mazarine Pingeot did not make the trip to Jarnac.

explained the daughter of the former president on RTL.

It did not fail.

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To the chagrin of the Elysee, where we swear hand on heart that it is all the same not Emmanuel Macron's fault if his mandate is marked by this unprecedented conjunction of commemorations and disappearances.

swears a Palace adviser.

Perhaps they remember then that Emmanuel Macron is not the first to try to scratch a little of the luster of the former socialist president.

Before him, Nicolas Sarkozy had taken much less precautions to wink at the left by appointing Frédéric Mitterrand, the nephew, Minister of Culture.

When you have to send a signal to the left, here's a name that sets the scene.

The Socialists know it well, who have marched in Jarnac since 1995 to invoke the ghosts of François Mitterrand.

To find the recipe for the union of the left especially.

Because François Mitterrand has long remained the only one of them to have succeeded in bringing together his political family.

This is what allowed him to enter the Elysee Palace.

Like François Hollande in 2012. Except that since then the Socialists have lost the recipe.

Emmanuel Macron does not help them to search.

Even less by paying homage to François Mitterrand.

As a fine connoisseur puts it,

So, if there is something to recover, Emmanuel Macron has positioned himself: he would well follow in those of the one who abolished the death penalty and defended his European commitment to the end.