It is an eight-year long parenthesis that Roselyne Bachelot closed on Monday, being appointed Minister of Culture in the new government of Jean Castex. Since 2012 and the defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidential election, she had indeed left political life. The one who was in turn responsible for Ecology, Health and Sport in different governments moved to rue de Valois, which is not necessarily a surprise for this great fan of opera and classical music.
A return to government? "It's a nightmare"
In eight years, Roselyne Bachelot had not left the scene, however. In 2012, she had in fact become a television columnist, first on C8, where she was flinging her former colleagues. "Either he is a liar or he is a thief", she had notably dropped in April about Claude Guéant, his former colleague in the Interior, accused at the time of having received cabinet bonuses in liquid.
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Roselyne Bachelot will then participate in Fort Boyard, before becoming a member of the Big Heads on RTL. Asked just a month and a half ago about a possible return to government by Laurent Ruquier, she said: "It's a nightmare!"
Mocked, mocked, then rehabilitated
It is this verve, this outspokenness that has forged its image. Son of Jean Narquin, resistance fighter and deputy, Roselyne Bachelot did not hesitate to defend the Pacs in 1998 against her own camp. Minister, she had to manage the strike of French soccer players during the 2010 World Cup, or order 2 billion masks to fight against the H1N1 flu in 2009. At the time, it was then mocked, mocked ... before being rehabilitated in recent months.
But Roselyne Bachelot, we know less, is also a lover of opera and classical music. She started the piano at the age of 3, released a book dedicated to Verdi, then a disc of her opera favorites. Now located on rue de Valois, it will have to rebuild a Culture sector struck down by the Covid-19 crisis.