RACHIDA DATI, MINISTER OF JUSTICE
Rachida Dati was a Judge before she became Nicolas Sarkozy's close advisor and chief spokesman.
“Mr Kouchner’s pro-American line should fit in well with Mr Sarkozy’s thinking, the BBC’s Caroline Wyatt reports. He was one of the few French politicians to support the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, on the grounds that it would topple Saddam Hussein.”
Bernard Kouchner is one of the most admired and respected political personalities in France.
A brilliant move on the part of Sarko. By placing the pro-American Kouchner in a high post, Sarko has sent a strong message of his Foreign Policy, as well as further crippled the already crumbling Left in advance of the Legislative Elections in June.
Why has Kouckner’s appointment created “bitter recriminations”?
Rachida Dati was a Judge before she became Nicolas Sarkozy's close advisor and chief spokesman.
“right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy”
Hey, that’s an improvement.
The appointment of Kouchner, a 67-year-old doctor-turned-politician who backed Sarkozy's Socialist rival Segolene Royal in the election campaign, has created bitter recrimination in left-wing ranks. Kouchner, founder of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity, is a former UN High Representative in Kosovo and one of the country's most popular politicians....and intercourse the left-wing cranks, er, ranks.
This in from Boz at French Election 2007:
This morning Sarkozy announced his new 15 person government, half the number of before. As if to make a point of not wasting time, there first meeting will be held today at 4:30 pm.
Confirming all expectations, Bernard Kouchner will be Foreign Minister, a bitter rift for the Socialist Party reeling from such a recent defeat.
Former Defense Secretary Michele Alliot-Marie, who once pondered challenging Sarkozy for the UMP presidential nomination, is going to fill Sarkozy's old post at the Interior Ministry.
Rachida Dati, the daughter of North African parents and Sarkozy's former spokeswoman, will become Justice Minister, the first time a senior post has been held by an ethnic minority. All the more interesting, the BBC reports that she "has strongly backed his ideas on affirmative action to counter racial discrimination in the jobs market," a quite un-French way of dealing with racial discrimination. Sarkozy has also scored another victory across party lines by giving the former head of the UDF in parliament, Herve Morin, the Ministry of Defense.
The Socialists have not taken the Kouchner news lying down, although they have as of yet been somewhat muted in response. Benoît Hamon, a Socialist European Deputy, told reporters at party headquarters that:
"He (Kouchner) has thus joined the government of Silvio Berlusconi (...) He is no longer a member of the Socialist Party. I have only one word, it is lamentable. Those who lent themselves (with this) made the choice to weaken the camp to which (...) they owed all."
Francois Fillon's new government assembled this afternoon for its first official meeting, but Sarkozy's "opening" to the left with the nomination of Bernard Kouchner as Foreign Minister has created nothing but bitterness in the Socialist camp. Today Socialist Party chief Francois Hollande himself came out to denounce the move:
"Bernard Kouchner, in entering the government, is no longer a member of the Socialist Party...the pseudo opening...was summarized with an individual adventure, that of Bernard Kouchner, who becomes a minister moreover in a government of the right."
Kouchner, however, appeared confident in his decision:
"If we did not have the feeling, while keeping our convictions, to serve this country, to serve our country, to serve France, we would not have done so. Nobody had forseen this, especially not me, and especially not four days ago.
Well, and what will hillary’s campaign make of this? Instead of a socialist woman president, France has a conservative male president and seven women in his cabinet.
How about Fred Thompson for president and seven tough, no-nonsense women working for him? Maybe Phyllis Schafly, for instance.
From The Tocqueville Connection
http://www.ttc.org/200705181948.l4ijmfg20744.htm
NEW FRENCH PM TO IMPLEMENT SARKOZY REFORMS ‘SCRUPULOUSLY’
- France’s new government plans to implement the reform agenda of freshly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy to the letter, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said in his first official interview Friday.
“It will be a free government and an open government but I say to both the French people and to the members of my government it will be a government that will scrupulously implement Nicolas Sarkozy’s political plan,” he told France’s evening news programme.
But he said that the greatest priority at the moment would be to secure a majority in legislative elections on June 10 and 17. Most opinion polls indicate Sarkozy’s UMP party will do so easily.
“Without a majority in the National Assembly, we will not be able to do anything about the commitments the president has undertaken,” Fillon told TF1.
Following the election, a special session of parliament will see the agenda dominated by tougher law and order measures, plans to make the labour market more flexible to reduce unemployment, and tax changes, he said.
Fillon, whose appointment was announced Thursday by Sarkozy, said the session would debate legislation on public security intended to toughen penalties for repeat offenders and youth crime.
A second priority would be the “rehabilitation of work,” with measures to make the labour market more flexible with tax concessions to employers on overtime hours.
Fillon also announced plans for a “tax revolution” including two steps to be implemented immediately: a reduction in inheritance tax “for 95 percent of French people except for the wealthiest,” and a tax cut on mortgages.
He added that he wanted to cut France’s national debt and budget deficit within five years.
“You have to relaunch growth in order to relaunch growth, you need the structural reforms that we are going to enact — this is what was missing in the past — and to do reforms you cannot hesitate to start things rolling,” he said.
“It’s over five years that we are going to reduce the state’s budget deficit, it’s over five years that we are going to reduce the debt. You have to know sometimes to invest a bit to make significant savings.”
Sarkozy on Friday unveiled a slimmed-down 15-minister government that includes seven women and the left-wing human rights champion Bernard Kouchner as foreign minister.
The new cabinet met for the first time Friday afternoon, Sarkozy repeating his commitment to reforms aimed at slashing unemployment to five percent, according to Christine Albanel, culture minister and government spokeswoman.
and this:
NEW FRENCH PM SIGNALS INITATIVES ON LAW AND ORDER, UNEMPLOYMENT, TAX
France’s new Prime Minister Francois Fillon Friday signalled plans for tougher law and order, measures to make the labour market more flexible to reduce unemployment, and tax changes.
These priorities would dominate the agenda of a special session of parliament to convene following legislative elections on June 10 and 17, he told television.
Fillon, whose appointment was announced Friday by France’s new right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy, said the National Assembly session would debate legislation on public security intended to toughen penalties for repeat offenders, including lowering the age for minors who repeatedly offend from 18 to 16 years.
A second priority would be the “rehabilitation of work,” with measures to make the labour market more flexible with tax concessions to employers on overtime hours.
Fillon also announced plans for a “tax revolution” including two steps to be implemented immediately, namely a reduction in inheritance tax “for 95 percent of French people except for the wealthiest,” and a tax deduction on borrowing to finance purchase of private homes.
Sarkozy on Friday unveiled a 15-minister government that includes seven women and the left-wing human rights champion Bernard Kouchner as foreign minister.
The new team, announced a day after the right-wing president named Francois Fillon as prime minister to lead his sweeping reform drive, is a radically slimmed down administration.
The new cabinet met for the first time Friday afternoon, Sarkozy repeating his commitment to reforms aimed at slashing unemployment to five percent, according to Christine Albanel, culture minister and government spokeswoman.
The new government is expected to quickly roll out a raft of measures to cut taxes, keep trains running during strikes and relax France’s 35-hour working week.
But Fillon must first lead his UMP party into parliamentary elections in June hoping for the majority needed to push through the reforms in the eurozone’s second biggest economy.
From The Tocqueville Connection :: http://www.ttc.org/200705171355.l4hdtun25617.htm
- Penelope Fillon, the Welsh woman whose husband Francois on Thursday became France's new prime minister, is the first British woman to marry a French head of government.
The daughter of a local solicitor in the village of Llanover, near Abergavenny in south Wales, the 51-year-old Fillon is set to be thrust into the public eye following her husband's appointment.
France's "first lady" is Cecilia Sarkozy, a former model and PR executive whose up-and-down relationship with President Nicolas Sarkozy has filled the pages of gossip tabloids for years.
By contrast, Penelope Fillion largely escaped the media glare during her husband's years in successive right-wing governments, leading a quiet life near the northern city of Le Mans, where the couple owns a 12th-century castle.
"Penny" was a law student when she met her future huband in the late 1970s while she was teaching English in a lycee in the Sarthe, the northern region which Francois Fillon represents in the French senate.
They married in her home village in 1981, and one of Francois' brothers, Pierre, later married Jane, Penelope's sister.
The couple have five children: Marie, Charles, Antoine, Edouard and Arnaud, the youngest of whom was born in 2001.
Reports say the Fillons are planning to leave their home, the Chateau de Beauve, to move into Matignon, the prime minister's official residence in Paris -- largely to allow Francois to stay in touch with his children.
The prime minister's residence is just down the road from the Elysee presidential palace, where the Sarkozys moved on Wednesday following the handover of power with Jacques Chirac.
Francois Fillon, 53, is a friend and ally of Sarkozy, serving as his political advisor and regular running partner during the election campaign.
As well as a long-distance runner, he is an avid mountain climber and a race-car driver who every year gets behind the wheel of a Ferrari to take part in the 24 Hour race Le Mans.
Like her husband, Penelope is a keen sportswoman with a passion for horseriding.
Locals says she fully integrated herself in the life of Sable-sur-Sarthe, the electoral fief of her husband, where she was appreciated for her simplicity and openness.
She was described by her former high school French teacher, Alan Breeze, as "an outstanding student, a gifted linguist and a very thoughtful person."
Eva Barre, the Hungarian wife of former prime minister Raymond Barre, was the first foreigner to be married to a French head of government under the Fifth Republic that began in 1958.
THree Frenchmen out of four approve the composition of PM Fillon’s government and Fillon’s own nomination as PM.
Even more interestingly, 72% of right-leaning voters and 63% of traditionally Left-leaning voters approve the way it associates Centrists and personalities from the Left such as Kouchner, Hirsch or Morin.