What purpose does journalism serve? Is it to relay the voice of the government, its “communications” strategy and propaganda? Or is it to report on information of public interest, which would otherwise remain smothered and hidden? Should the media believe, without counter-checking, official statements and denials? Or should they challenge these with the reality of acts, of decisions and behaviour?
Should journalists be unmoved by the public’s loss of confidence in institutions and elected representatives, or rather advance the democratic cause by taking seriously the original promise of the equality of rights for all?
If these questions are raised, it is because, in the case of François de Rugy, there is a certain refrain just now among the French media, fed by official propaganda, that raises doubts about the fundamentals of our job as journalists. We at Mediapart are neither petty informers nor nihilists, to paraphrase the language used against us by President Emmanuel Macrons administration. Rather, we are simply journalists who are driven by a concern of elevating and improving democracy by raising awareness to events through our investigations.
In the case of Rugy, what is at stake is the private and arbitrary use made by elected representatives and ministers of the means accorded to them by the state, a use made without any control and in the manner of their choosing.
None of the facts revealed by Mediapart (such as the cost of the refurbishment and decorations ordered by François de Rugy in his grace and favour apartment as Minister of the Environment, or the dinner parties among friends organised at the official residence, during his previous post, as the speaker of the National Assembly), has been placed in doubt by the two reports of internal administrative inquiries into the revelations which were published on July 23rd (see our report on these here).
While the reports had no independent character – one was redacted by services that answer to the prime minister’s office, the other by the services of the current speaker of the National Assembly – they both confirm the public interest or our reporting: governing officials and representatives are now required to place themselves in question after Prime Minister Édouard Philippe this week published a circular detailing the required conditions of “exemplarity of members of government”. His office has notably tightened regulations concerning the demands of ministers for decorating and refurbishment work on their allocated, state-funded residences. Meanwhile, the lower house, the National Assembly, has set up a working committee to better control the rules surrounding the personal expenses, paid for out of public funds, incurred by its speaker.
All of which is to the benefit of the French state, and is thanks to an independent and free press. Moreover, our investigations into Rugy's lavish dinner parties and refurbishment of his ministerial apartment were accompanied by other revelations by Mediapart which, although they were not the subject of the two administrative inquiries, ultimately led to the minister's final decision to resign. Our latest questions over his use of expenses as a Member of Parliament (MP) before 2017 placed him in an inextricably embarrassing situation regarding both the tax authorities and the prospect even of eventual prosecution for a criminal offence.
The notion that Rugy’s case is not an exceptional one, as has been suggested by some journalists who habitually frequent national institutions, is hardly reassuring. Quite the opposite. With this exemplary case of a relatively young politician (François de Rugy is 45-years-old), who has never known any other career than that of a politician (he entered politics at the age of 18), and who presented himself as a political renovator (first with the Green party EELV, subsequently after joining Emmanuel Macron’s LREM party) seeking to bring an end to the bad habits of the old guard, Mediapart raised two key issues: that of the coherency, or not, between a politician’s statements and his acts – an essential issue of confidence for citizens – and that of the appropriation of the means of the state by those who represent it or who take part in its administration.
From that point of view, we took into account the speeches and pledges made at the very first stage of the Macron presidency. The very first draft legislation of President Macron’s five-year term was on this very subject, although it was ultimately shrunk and limited when its proposer, Macron’s centre-right MoDem party ally and, briefly, justice minister François Bayrou, was forced to quit government after just 35 days over a scandal that engulfed him and his party over allegations that MoDem staff were fraudulently employed as European Parliament assistants. The case of François Fillon, the conservative Les Républicains party presidential candidate who himself was discredited by revelations of how he employed, allegedly fraudulently, his family members as parliamentary assistants, a scandal that facilitated Macron’s victory in the elections and for which Fillon and his wife will stand trial later this year, was then so recent that an “accelerated procedure” was demanded to rush through the draft legislation, initially presented as “re-establishing confidence in public action”.
The motivations for what would become a double law, both ordinary and organic (see here and here), “for confidence in political life” could be cited to oppose, word for word, the editorialists and sycophants who, screaming like banshees at Mediapart’s reports, denounce a supposed dictatorship of transparency or an imagined witch-hunt. “Transparency towards citizens, the probity of elected representatives, the exemplarity of their behaviour constitute fundamental democratic requirements,” read the text of the legislation. “They contribute to reinforcing the ties between citizens and their representatives, just as they must strengthen the foundations of our social contract.”
“Our public life today needs a ‘shock of confidence’,” added the text of the legislation, the laudable intentions of which were soon to be overcome by events in the first few months of the Macron presidency. One year after the Alexandre Benalla affair, that of François de Rugy poses, on a different level, the same question of exemplarity, an exemplarity without which there will be no return of democratic and civic confidence. To be aware of this during an electoral period and then only to ignore it once in power is, obviously, something that weakens the institutions of the state, their credibility, utterances and image.
From the case of Alexandre Benalla, President Macron's disgraced security aide, to that of Rugy, the support that was blindly lent to them by the pinnacle of power demonstrates very well thow this exemplarity is sorely lacking. And if Mediapart could have given the impression that its reports on François de Rugy were somehow deliberately presented as an unfolding series, the fact is that numerous witnesses, at the heart of our institutions, became alarmed at the situation. By bluntly ousting his chief of staff immediately after our revelations of how she occupied a Paris apartment of subsidised social housing while working for years outside the capital (see Mediapart's report here), François de Rugy prompted certain conscientious citizens to come forward, such was the reaction prompted by his ‘one rule for some, another for the rest’ approach to exemplarity.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
“We must, as of now, concretise the promise of a renewal of practices,” Rugy said in an interview immediately after his election as president (speaker) of the lower house, the National Assembly, in September 2017. During that interview with the monthly review Courrier du Parlement, published on September 14th 2017, he denounced a situation of “reforms that have been postponed for too long”, underlined that the French public, among who was a “strong expectation”, were watchful of necessary progress, and that “there is a real issue about transparency”.
“A lot has already been done, but it is not sufficient” he added. “More must be done. We must leave behind this culture of opacity and secrecy which fuels mistrust and anti-parliamentarianism.”
Mediapart has simply taken the governing power and this politician at their word. To highlight the amnesia that ends up taking hold of them in the exercise of their positions is to be faithful to the requirements of democracy. In his attempts to defend his actions, François de Rugy recently attacked the Swedish model of exemplarity, transparency and control over government spending, whereas in 2017 he was full of praise for it, promising “to draw inspiration of good practices abroad by parliaments at the forefront on certain questions; Sweden on issues of transparency”.
In line with Mediapart’s longstanding reporting on the control and integrity of ministers and elected politicians, our investigations into Rugy’s behaviour illustrate the immense archaism on the subject in France, as underlined by numerous tribunes published in the French press following our revelations (in French, here, here and here ). There is hardly need of a comparison with Sweden in order to be astonished by the lifestyle of the political elite in France, housed in grand state-owned mansions with service personnel, ordering refurbishments for their personal comfort, mixing public and private affairs amid an absence of independent control and an opacity over their spending, enjoying a tolerance of abuse of position, not to mention frequent impunity – which would, for example, be unthinkable in Britain.
France is not only living under a monarchical system because of the very little-limited presidential powers, it is also the case because of the behaviour, habits and arrangements that stem from the appropriation of the will of all by the power of one person alone; this too common sentiment among parliamentary and government elites that the means of the state is at their service, whereas they should, on the opposite, ensure the most sparing use of public funds. This is not only a question of moral virtue, but above all one of political effectiveness. Public consent to paying taxes requires the certainty that public funds are not dilapidated for personal or futile use.
Behind the conveniences of this hotel republic also lies a taboo question, that of accelerated enrichment within the professional political world, with its posts and careers, its affluence and facilities. Otherwise put, the issue here is of the social distance that these bad habits dig between the people and their political representatives. The indecency that is displayed, this condition of not knowing how to conduct themselves with due limits, is a symbolic violence for most citizens which subsequently results in heightened discredit, resentment and anger.
It is not Mediapart’s revelations that harm France’s republican institutions, but rather the practices that they unveil.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse