The hemorrhage continues: after the first departures the day after a false announcement of a foiled attack, three new advisers to Prisca Thevenot left the office of the government spokesperson, according to a decree published on Saturday April 27 in the Official Journal. In total, seven people from the minister’s team left in less than a month.
The functions of Ms. Thévenot’s special advisor, her “parliamentary and local elected” advisor, as well as her advisor “in charge of the argument” were “terminated”, specifies the decree. The three concerned “submitted their resignations”, according to Libération, which echoed these departures on Friday evening by making the link with “the behavior of a government spokesperson weakened by communication hiccups”. .
Appointed in January, the minister had already lost her “discourse” advisor at the beginning of April, implicated by a Mediapart investigation revealing her “attraction” to the ideas of far-right essayist Alain Soral. Then in mid-April, his three main advisors – director, deputy director and chief of staff – slammed the door at the same time, immediately replaced by other ministerial collaborators.
The spokesperson had meanwhile found herself at the center of a boondoggle over the terrorist threat, announcing an “attempt to take action” during the Easter weekend before having to correct her own statements during ‘a report from the council of ministers.
“It’s like in love, life in offices is like this. There are people who leave making noise and others who stay in silence and others who return in silence,” commented Ms. Thevenot, when asked about these serial resignations. “What matters to me and what interests me today (…) is to be able to explain, to carry out the action resolutely undertaken by the President of the Republic,” she added, without giving the reasons for these departures. “I will continue to do it with a determined team,” she assured.
