France’s Macron picks new PM after election rout
>>PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday tapped a senior but low-profile bureaucrat as prime minister to replace Edouard Philippe, the first move in a widely expected cabinet reshuffle after dismal local election showings for the ruling party.
The new premier, Jean Castex, was drawn from the right-wing opposition to Mr Macron’s centrist party, and was totally unknown to most in France until now.
But Mr Castex, a former top aide to ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, has been in charge of the country’s progressive emergence from the coronavirus lockdown, a policy greeted as a relative success by experts.
“Let’s be clear: I’m not here to seek the limelight. I’m here to get results,” Mr Castex said in what was effectively his introduction to the general public during a prime-time interview on TF1.
He said he would present his political road map this week, and a wider cabinet overhaul is expected in the coming days.
Mr Macron has promised a “new course” for France to deal with the crisis, which has plunged France into its worst recession since World War II and left millions of people facing unemployment.
The former investment banker, who had swept to power in 2017 on promises to radically reform the country, already has a close eye on his 2022 re-election bid after months of protests and strikes that preceded the current coronavirus outbreak.
Speculation that Mr Philippe was on the way out had mounted last week after Mr Macron’s centrists were routed in municipal elections last Sunday, which saw the Greens take control of several major cities in the country.
Mr Philippe, a popular rightwing politician who never joined Mr Macron’s Republic on the Move party, nonetheless easily won his bid to be mayor of Le Havre.
While many analysts thought Mr Macron would tack left or look farther afield for his premier, Mr Castex is a pure product of the French administrative elite, having attended the same ENA managerial university as Mr Macron and Mr Philippe.
“We might have expected a political shift, but this is a technocrat,” Christian Jacob, head of the Republicans, told AFP, indicating that Mr Castex would be cast out of the party.
His nomination comes after Mr Philippe has pushed through a series of Mr Macron’s controversial overhauls that sparked massive strikes as well as the fierce “yellow vest” anti-government revolt.
Sources close to Mr Philippe told AFP on Friday that he would help Mr Macron “consolidate” his majority in parliament, after an embarrassing series of defections in recent weeks by lawmakers unhappy with the president’s policies.
Press reports had suggested that Mr Macron might keep Mr Philippe after all, not least after he praised his work as “remarkable” in an interview with regional newspapers which were published on Thursday.
Nonetheless, “we have to chart a new course” with “a new team”, Mr Macron said.
Other top ministers could also be on the way out, but analysts have noted Mr Macron has a thin bench of potential replacements, not least because his party has repeatedely failed to produce any standouts from its parliamentary ranks.