France’s new PM under fire for chairing municipal council amid cyclone tragedy

France’s new prime minister, François Bayrou, was on Tuesday, December 17, facing a torrent of criticism less than a week into the job after choosing to chair a provincial town hall meeting as the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte grappled with the devastation wreaked by a cyclone.

Bayrou was named by President Emmanuel Macron on Monday as the sixth premier of his mandate, with the head of state giving his long-time ally the chance to pull France out of months of political crisis. The veteran centrist had already ruffled some feathers by insisting that, in contrast to some predecessors, he keeps his post as mayor of the southwestern city of Pau even while serving as prime minister.

Bayrou headed to Pau on Monday evening to chair the town hall meeting where he confirmed that he would stay on in the post that he has held for the last decade. His presence there meant that he only attended a crisis meeting chaired by Macron on the situation in Mayotte, where hundreds are feared to have been killed by Cyclone Chido, via video conference.

French Assemblée Nationale speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet, a member of Macron’s centrist party, criticized his trip to Pau. “In the face of such a catastrophe – of a kind that has not been seen on French territory for decades – it is important to be side-by-side with the people. I would have preferred that the prime minister, instead of taking a plane for Pau, took a plane for Mamoudzou,” she told Franceinfo radio, referring to Mayotte’s capital.

The head of the faction of the hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI) in parliament, Mathilde Panot, said that after “20 years of the politics of abandonment” of Mayotte, Bayrou “did not understand the symbol” he had sent by going to Pau.

On the right, Les Républicains (LR) MP Thibault Bazin said that the municipal council could have “done without” the presence of its mayor “given the situation in Mayotte and the urgency of having a government as soon as possible to give France a budget as soon as possible.”

Appointed on Friday, Bayrou has still to name a government, with ministers from the previous administration staying on in a caretaker capacity. In a day of high political drama on Friday, when the identity of the new premier was only announced at the last moment, sources said Bayrou had effectively strong-armed Macron into naming him by threatening to withdraw the support of the centrist MoDem party that he leads.

Proud of his rural origins in southwestern France, Bayrou has also written a biography of one of Pau’s most famous natives and his personal hero, King Henry IV of France, who was born in the Pau château and ruled from 1589 to his assassination in 1610.