The great debate between 150 citizens and the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, took place with watches in hand. “I am told that I am going to miss my train,” justified the Prime Minister who came to feed his next general policy declaration with testimonies from locals.
An hour and forty minutes, not a minute more so that Gabriel Attal doesn’t miss his train, that’s how long the citizen debate organized in Orliénas, in the Rhône, lasted. The Prime Minister, who came to nourish his general policy declaration with the testimony of this assembly formed for the occasion, rather expedited the exercise. The one who did not plan to “prepare it by remaining in [his] office with [his] advisers”, preferred to go and meet the French on Saturday January 20. “You look like the country, you are the image of the country,” said the Prime Minister to the rather elderly and homogeneous assembly.
Seventeen interventions followed one after the other, sometimes addressing the farmers’ demonstrations, the subject of the moment, the Universal National Service or even the construction of social housing. Then, quickly, his chief of staff, Maxime Cordier, made signs to him. “I am told that I am going to miss my train”, “I have a meeting in Matignon”, explained Gabriel Attal, before quickly adjourning the session and leaving for Gare de Lyon at around 4:30 p.m.
Arriving at 11:30 a.m., the same morning, the head of government “intruded”, in his words, on the wishes of the mayor of the town of 2,100 inhabitants where he listed the major themes of his program before having lunch with elected officials of the region. Not far from there, in Gironde, at the same time, the young hope of the extreme right, Jordan Bardella, was in the company of angry farmers, seizing the subject in his favor. “Five months before the elections, everyone is talking like the National Rally, and coming from Gabriel Attal, it’s starting to show, it’s perhaps a little excessive,” he asserted.