Paris - President Nicolas Sarkozy scored a political coup with a government shake-up bringing in the nephew of France's late Socialist leader Francois Mitterrand, but critics accused him on Wednesday of sidelining women and minorities.
Wrong-footing the French establishment who had bet on a minor rejig of the right-wing executive, Sarkozy on Tuesday carried out the first major government reshuffle since his election in mid-2007.
The French leader, who set out a roadmap for his new government in a speech to parliament on Monday, gathered his ministers for their first meeting on Wednesday, urging them to be "bold reformers."
Prime Minister Francois Fillon stays at the helm, but six ministers were fired while two left to take up European parliament seats, including Rachida Dati, the glamorous emblem of Sarkozy's drive to promote ethnic minorities.
Continues Below ↓
Strong-armed into the EU race after falling out of favour with her mentor, Dati hands the justice ministry to ex-interior minister Michele Alliot-Marie.
Seen as the biggest winner of the reshuffle, Brice Hortefeux, a lifelong Sarkozy friend and ally, was promoted to the strategic interior ministry.
The president's most high-profile catch was Frederic Mitterrand, a gay TV presenter and writer, who leaves his job as head of the Villa Medici French cultural academy in Rome to become culture minister.
Despite his lineage, the 61-year-old Mitterrand was never a card-carrying Socialist. He backed the right-winger Jacques Chirac as president in 1995 and even professes a royalist streak.
But Mitterrand's name alone enables Sarkozy - who has pursued a strategy of poaching high-profile defectors from rival camps - to score points against the beleaguered Socialist opposition.
The left-wing Liberation newspaper described his appointment as "a bad joke played on the opposition," while several papers called it a "political coup."
But with the departure of Dati, the first Arab to hold a senior French cabinet post, Sarkozy loses his most powerful symbol of diversity - taking him further away from his initial "rainbow" government.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
