Select a language
For Libération, the cabinet reshuffle announced by Nicolas Sarkozy on 27 February is clear evidence of "panic on board" the good ship France. "Swept away by the Arab uprising," Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie (MAM) and Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux will now be replaced by the current Defence Minister Alain Juppé, and Sarkozy’s right-hand man at the Elysée, Claude Guéant. Over the last six weeks, MAM, as Alliot-Marie is know, was the target of a political and media attacks over her catastrophic management of the Tunisian crisis, while Hortefeux, who is trailing a conviction for incitement to racial hatred, had become too much of a burden. In a television speech, the president announced that the reshuffle would redefine France’s foreign policy in the light of recent developments in the Maghreb and the Middle East. However, the daily notes that “instead of sharing in the hope fed by the uprising, he once again raised the spectre of increased migration in his outline of a French external policy, which now appears to be held hostage by electoral considerations." The French president is gearing up for an election race to be decided in April and May of 2012.
