Gray suit, black day. It is 9.45 am this Thursday, Jean Castex has just ended a half-hour speech before the National Assembly, to defend and explain the heavy decision to reconfigure the country. “The test that strikes us is unprecedented, we must become one”, he has just concluded, facing a half-conquered, half-mocking hemicycle. He takes off his glasses, runs down the steps that take him out of the stand. An employee stops him dead, slips a word to him. The Prime Minister goes up. He instructs Richard Ferrand, installed on his Perchoir, to warn the deputies of the attack which struck Nice a few tens of minutes earlier and to proceed to a minute of silence. Cold snap on the Palais Bourbon.
VIDEO. Nice attack: the National Assembly observes a minute of silence
Castex apologizes, then slips away to go to the Ministry of the Interior, where the crisis unit responsible for monitoring the terrorist file has been set up. During this time, many are the deputies out of majority, while always taking the precaution of having a word for the victims of Nice, who do not give up tackling the government management of the Covid-19. “Incompetence or negligence? “Asks the socialist Valérie Rabault, who would have preferred to interrupt this debate, given the circumstances. Others point to “the mistakes” of the government, when Jean-Luc Mélenchon regrets that Parliament is only a chamber for recording executive decisions.
“A man decides everything, all alone, surrounded by this defense council above ground”, tackles the Insubordinate. The leader of LR deputies Damien Abad calls into question “the failed deconfinement”, warns that the next one should not be “synonymous with collapse”. The right wanted to vote against the government’s plan, they finally abstained, so as not to add dissension to the drama that the country is going through, on this extraordinary Thursday morning. In the end, 399 votes for, 27 votes against.
Critics rain in the Senate
Jean Castex returns later in the morning. Emmanuel Macron, leaving for Nice with some ministers, takes the security front. Charge to Matignon to take care of the health front. “We cannot allow one news item to crush another. The risk of giving the impression of jumping from one sequence to another is also to hand the stick to the oppositions who in two weeks will reproach us for having done this too much or not done enough that “, judges a ministerial adviser , for whom the distribution of roles between the President and the Prime Minister is “essential”: “The French are in shock at what happened in Nice, and also in shock at what was announced to them the day before . “
In the hemicycle, the former mayor of Prades responds sharply to the criticisms that erupted in his absence, recalling that the crisis situation is European. “If we supposedly missed deconfinement in France, then it was missed everywhere! », Annoys the Prime Minister. Stung, he will also be in the Senate in the afternoon. Here the majority is not acquired to the president, criticism rains. Castex’s voice goes from the heights, he refuses to hear himself say that the government is “the toys of the scientific council”. It is 4:45 p.m. The Senate decides to inflict a snub on the government, and rejects the government’s statement: 178 votes against, 130 for, 27 abstentions. At 6 p.m. sharp, Emmanuel Macron tweets: “I call for the unity of all. »Jean Castex retweeted.
6.30 p.m. There is no question either of returning to the press conference where the ministers must again educate the measures that will accompany the reconfinement. Here again, Castex begins with “the despicable attack”, before taking up the health issue with both hands. The two crises will have collided all day, the viewer, him, is groggy. The day is finally over. Interviews with Monsignors Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, President of the Conference of Bishops of France, and Michel Aupetit, Archbishop of Paris to show the government’s support with the Catholic community. While the country hardly seems to start its Stations of the Cross.
Original article by : www.leparisien.fr
