When the revelations about environment minister François de Rugy and his spending on the public purse first broke, President Emmanuel Macron was determined to keep the man who was the de facto number 2 of the government after the prime minister. The president did not want to “give an inch to Mediapart” - who broke the story - according to several people close to him during the week.
Indeed, on the eve of François de Rugy's eventual departure on Tuesday July 16th, the French head of state made it clear that he would not make a decision on the minister's fate simply on the basis of “revelations”. Speaking during a trip to Serbia on July 15th, President Macron said: “Otherwise, it becomes the Republic of denunciations. I just have to take out a photograph, say things about you, about anyone, and it becomes like 'And Then There Were None' [editor's note referring to the novel by Agatha Christie].”
The way that the government approaches this issue is rather curious: as if what was at stake in the whole affair was some kind of juvenile power struggle with Mediapart. But the president's words say a great deal about the way he regards the work of journalists. For by contrasting press “revelations” with the “facts” that he aims to get from the internal inquiries he set up, the head of state appears to forget that “facts” are not something that depend on the official approval of the government in power.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Journalism is in fact about finding the reality hidden behind established truths. But Emmanuel Macron has no time for this view of journalism. As he said to Parliamentarians from his ruling La République en Marche (LREM) party during the height of the Benalla affair involving his security aide in the summer of 2018: “...we have a press which no longer seeks the truth.” That is some take, given the number of untruths that the government has churned out since the start of this presidency. In the François de Rugy affair, as with all those that have caused ministers to quit since 2017, it is journalism which has started the process.
The government then advances its second argument which is that it is the law which is the ultimate authority. “Has he broken the rules? The answer is no. So our confidence remains,” prime minister Édouard Philippe's office told Le Parisien after Mediapart's initial revelations about the grand dinners enjoyed by François de Rugy when he was President of the National Assembly. “The official position was: we don't get into morality, let's be legalistic in our approach,” says a LREM MP summing up the government's approach. This is not a new position; since the start of this presidency the executive has sheltered behind the law in order to avoid having to deal with the politics of a situation. But this criminal law-led approach has to be treated with caution given that it comes from a government that at the same time says it wants to feel “comfortable” with the prosecutors that it nominates.
“The rule that I've set for taking part in government is that if you are placed under formal investigation you must leave, while as long as you have not been placed under formal investigation you can stay,” prime minister Édouard Philippe said in June 2017 in the affairs involving former LREM party boss Richard Ferrand and former justice minister François Bayrou. At the time the name of security aide Alexandre Benalla was still unknown to the public and the affair which bears his name had not traumatised the LREM party's MPs. They did not rush to defend François de Rugy during his more recent difficulties.
Most importantly of all, this government emphasis on the law is skewed politically because it effectively excludes ethical issues, even though these are etched in stone in the ruling party's “Charter of Values”. The party's representatives can no longer run away from such ethical issues following the 'yellow vest' protests and the disconnect they highlighted between sections of the public and the governing classes.
Speaking off the record after Mediapart's initial revelations about de Rugy and his grand dinners, several LREM politicians acknowledged this point. “After the yellow vests it's the worst thing that could have happened. The images are terrible, you get the impression it's the return of the monarchy, of the king and of feasts,” said one leading MP from the ruling party about the photographs published of lobsters and vintage wines. Over the course of a week opinion polls tracking the public mood and the feedback from their constituencies daily fuelled these MPs' concerns. The images of lavish living on the public purse had become so engrained in people's minds that politicians fear they will never be forgotten. “It's on course to be the summer joke,” sighed one senior figure in the LREM.
Contrary to what many senior politicians and commentators have said in recent days, the list of ministers implicated in an affair and who have resigned before receiving any legal sanction is a long one: Kader Arif, Thomas Thévenoud, Jérôme Cahuzac, Georges Tron, Michèle Alliot-Marie, Alain Joyandet, Christian Blanc, Hervé Gaymard, Pierre Bédier, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Michel Roussin, Gérard Longuet, Alain Carignon and Bernard Tapie. On each occasion the politics of the situation has won out over the rules that had been fixed by the government of the day.
In the corridors of the National Assembly and in ministerial private offices everyone is very aware that - with the François de Rugy affair - it is now the Macron presidency's turn to face the same issue. It is a problem which, in the view of some, could have been sorted quickly if the former green MP turned Macron supporter had not appeared to be an indispensable pillar of the executive. It is true that he was the number two in the government behind the prime minister and the only minister with the senior rank of Minister of State. “But you can't say that he has really made his mark,” one LREM MP said a few days before de Rugy resigned. “It's clear that it was less problematic to see him go than Nicolas Hulot,” added one of his colleagues, referring to the departure of the high-profile environmentalist as environment minister in the summer of 2018.
“I don't give a damn about de Rugy. He's dragging us all down!” This quote from a fellow minister, reported by Paris-Match magazine, reflects the views of a good number of Macron loyalists. “He's not liked, he doesn't have friends or a network,” said one MP from the ruling party. “On top of this solitude you can add a catastrophic defence … as soon as something appeared which could not be legal, it really changed changed drastically.”
That something appeared on Monday evening, just after President Macron spoke about a “Republic of denunciations”, when Mediapart sent the environment minister's office new questions which concerned de Rugy's use of his expenses as an MP.
If it is proven he made a mistake, the risk of legal sanction is a low one. Yet this new revelation, which came on top of all the disclosures over the previous week, hastened François de Rugy's departure. “The president of the Republic has accepted François de Rugy's resignation. It is a personal decision that he respects so that he can fully defend himself,” the Élysée said a few hours after the minister quit.
In fact, and in keeping with his view that there is an ongoing battle with the press, Emmanuel Macron would doubtless have preferred to have waited for the results of prime minister Édouard Philippe's inquiry aimed at “bringing full clarity” over the expenditure of his embattled minister. The results of these are expected any day now, and indeed there are already reports that the authorities have ruled that de Rugy's dinners at the the centre of the controversy were indeed legitimately professional and not private in nature. But in the end the president and the prime minister accepted the minister's resignation without waiting for the results. Insiders say that this was done in order to help clear the air.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
Engish version by Michael Streeter