story“Macron, the exercise of power” (2/5). The chaotic beginnings of the management of the pandemic weakened the head of state, but the incumbent president quickly knew how to make it a political asset and hopes to draw credit for his re-election.
More than 130,000 dead, thousands of lives shattered by chronic disability, serial depression… Two years after the start of the Covid-19 epidemic, the toll is heavy, very heavy, in France, as in the rest of the world. For a long time, the faithful of Emmanuel Macron considered that this crisis, which first brought the State to its knees, constituted a terrible political ball and chain for the President of the Republic, likely to prevent his re-election.
But, less than two months before the presidential election of April 10 and 24, the management of “the most serious health crisis that France has known for a century”, in the words of the Head of State, has turned into one of his main assets to seek a new mandate at the Elysée. Or how a health disaster has gradually become a political weapon.
It had however started very badly, with an executive accused of having underestimated the scale of the crisis. On March 7, when France is one of the main centers of the virus in Europe, with Italy, and already has sixteen deaths, Emmanuel Macron goes… to the theater, in the company of his wife. With one objective: to encourage the French to go out. ” Life goes on. There is no reason, except for vulnerable populations, to change our outing habits., he declares. As if, in the face of the wave that is about to fall on the country, the first figure in the state had decided to take refuge in denial.
judged “very worrying” by the World Health Organization (WHO), the situation is however cause for concern. Around the world, more than 100,000 people are already affected, in 94 countries. But in Paris, don’t panic. On March 11, the spokesperson for the government at the time, Sibeth Ndiaye, indicated that, during her speech scheduled for the following day, the Head of State would “to work to reassure the French ». According to her, the hypothesis of confinement, as will be put in place in Lombardy, does not exist. She then only repeats Mr. Macron’s message. “We are not in a situation in which we are going to have to stop the country! We must be right, 80% of people who are infected do not get sick”he got carried away a week before, in front of his ministers, reports Laurence Benhamou, in his book Palace Solitaire (Robert Laffont, 436 pages, 21 euros), published on January 20.
No question of panicking, while some doctors evoke a simple “flu”. Behind the scenes, several ministers want to be reassuring, explaining that France is better protected to face the “Chinese virus” than Italy, whose “the health system is less good”and or “the population is older”. This would explain the number of deaths, which amounts to more than 827, against 48 in France.
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