The French were numerous to wait Monday night for the words of Emmanuel Macron, but the images of Our Lady of Paris ravaged by the flames have upset the news, and swept the presidential address. Arrived at the scene of the disaster in the early evening, the president assured that the building, more than eight hundred years old, would be rebuilt. Around the head of state was set up an unexpected political truce, after five months of crisis triggered by the grumbling of "yellow vests".
Suddenly, the unthinkable
Monday at 19 hours, the political life of the country has frozen. The Elysee became aware of the incident even as the head of state was putting the finishing touches to his televised speech, scheduled for 20 hours. After working on his speech until 4 pm, Emmanuel Macron had just completed the recording, along with a small team, when he heard the news, reports RTL. Entering the room, Alexis Kohler, the secretary general of the presidency, would have just launched: "Our Lady is on fire!"
Decision is immediately taken to postpone the intervention of the Head of State. After two months of waiting - the great debate ended on March 29 - and while many commentators saw in this speech a pivotal moment of the five-year period, the urgency of the situation takes precedence over the presidential calendar. Evoking the "terrible fire ravaging Notre-Dame de Paris", the palace announced in a statement the postponement of the televised intervention without giving another date. It is out of the question for the presidency to let talk that could not have evoked a tragedy that is being witnessed by France as a whole.
Emmanuel Macron arrives with his wife on the Ile de la Cité around 8:15 pm. At the same time, the emotion has seized the entire state apparatus, which soon finds itself at the side of the president, at the foot of the burning sanctuary: the Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, the President of the Assembly Richard Ferrand, that of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, the Secretary of State to the Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, the Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, or the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. However, the Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, who is on the move in Mayotte, has failed to express his "guilt" for not being in Paris.
On social networks, politicians of all kinds express their amazement, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, asking for "24 hours of political pause". "The fire of Notre-Dame de Paris stabs everyone's mind," he writes in a tweet. On Tuesday morning, several political parties, including LR, LREM and RN, announced the suspension of their campaign for the Europeans.
>> Follow our LIVE Essentials on the fire of Notre-Dame de Paris
Unexpected union at the time of division
In an hour of time only, in the face of the scale of the disaster and the dantesque images broadcast continuously by the news channels, a kind of sacred union is formed. Emmanuel Macron finally spoke Monday in the late evening, but not really as he had planned. "I tell you very solemnly tonight: this cathedral we will rebuild, all together," he promised in front of the cameras, also confirming the launch of a national subscription from Tuesday. Words in resonance with what he said the day before his election, proclaiming "together France".
"It will remain as a very strong image of this quinquennium," said the microphone Europe 1 Bruno Jeudy, the editor of the political service of Paris Match . A paradoxical image, also: "The President of the Republic was to give a speech, to try to conclude this 'great debate' and this country so divided now found itself united around a cathedral, proof that the roots are very important in this country ", continues this specialist of the political life.
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As donations pour in Tuesday to help rebuild the disemboweled cathedral, another question arises: how to rebuild the political sequence scheduled for Monday night to announce the measures of the end of the "great debate", which collapsed at the same time as the frame of Notre-Dame? Officially, the recorded video has been overwritten. A press conference was planned to explain the announced decisions. Will everything be gathered in a single press conference, which could be planned in the coming days? The decision is delicate, because from the moment the president decides to resume his political agenda, he risks ending the moment of national emotion around Notre-Dame de Paris.