Two weeks after the resignation of the Minister of the Interior, a cabinet shuffle should be announced tomorrow. Without knowing the extent of the changes made.
The reorganized government composition is likely to be announced only on Monday. That's two weeks after Gérard Collomb's first resignation (refused). It's long, even for a big "event".
This is primarily due to the fact that Gerard Collomb had himself announced that he would leave only after the European elections in the spring of 2019. A departure in October had not been anticipated.
The choice not to replace it "post to post", as was the case in September after the resignation of Nicolas Hulot, but to take advantage of it to proceed to a much larger rework, did not help. It was necessary to find candidates, to check their patrimony, to make sure of their judicial antecedents ... Which takes time.
"Neither right nor left"
The end of the suspense was announced for Tuesday, Wednesday morning at the latest, Council of Ministers day. It would have been a reasonable time, which everyone believed. The reshuffle? "I think it will be in the day," announced the guard of the seals, Nicole Belloubet, on RTL , Tuesday morning. I am sure we will have a Minister of the Interior in the coming hours. "
Missed. The next day, at the end of the Council of Ministers, Benjamin Griveaux, spokesman for the government, announced that " the President fully takes the time to make the famous reshuffle ". It is postponed sine die , Emmanuel Macron having refused some of the names proposed by Édouard Philippe.
The Prime Minister, who logically wants to have trusted employees, would have put forward personalities from its networks. Rather marked to the right, or to the right center, then. What to unbalance a presidential majority that wants to remain "neither right nor left".
To refuse certain names obliges to revive the whole procedure of recruitment, and all the verifications which accompany it. Which takes time. And sow doubt as to the state of relations between Emmanuel Macron and Édouard Philippe.
A test
" Nobody, never, will put the beginning of the beginning of the half of a sheet of paper to cigarette between the president of the Republic and the Prime Minister ", had to specify it last in front of the deputies, Wednesday, in the Assembly. Then Thursday, in the Senate.
Titillated by oppositions, Édouard Philippe denounced "rumors" surrounding the reshuffle and displays his "serenity" in what looks like a strong test, for him as for the President. Only the reworked government announcement will end the sequence. It should include several new heads, but also see some government members change positions. Or not...