The new French Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, confessed this Wednesday that her ambition is to win the mayor of Paris in the municipal elections of 2026. Dati’s announcement, a controversial Macron signing from the right, has surprised because it confirms the feeling that the position you have just occupied is nothing more than a springboard to reach your true goal.
“Everyone knows it, I’m not hiding behind anything, my goal is Paris,” said Dati, who was Nicolas Sarkozy’s Justice Minister, in an interview with the RTL network.
The Minister of Culture intends to continue retaining her position as mayor of the 7th district of the capital, from which she has led a very tough opposition to the socialist Anne Hidalgo and her coalition with the environmentalists and the communists in the City Council.
Hidalgo ranted against Dati when he found out that he was entering the Government, and accused her of having introduced slander and insult into the Parisian town hall. The new minister again criticized the management in Paris in an interview and recalled that every year the city loses 15,000 inhabitants.
Dati’s statements to RTL anticipate what could be a problem for Macron and his prime minister, Gabriel Attal. Since the new Cabinet was announced, the Minister of Justice has occupied many covers and has been the protagonist of numerous comments. Choosing her for the team was a media coup by the president, although it could have destabilizing consequences in the medium term.
The Executive spokesperson, Prisca Thevenot, reacted to Dati’s words by trying to give a sense of normality and taking away the irony. “That Rachida Dati is a free, committed and active woman is not something that is discovered now,” Thevenot said before the France Info microphones. “It seems to me rather positive that a woman claims her freedom in a world where which is very much needed.”
During the press conference he gave last night at the Elysée, Macron expressed his willingness to change the electoral system in force in the municipal elections of Paris, Lyon and Marseille to return to direct universal suffrage to elect mayors. The right has always complained that, at least in the case of Paris, the complex indirect system, based on the districts, has harmed them and re-enthroned Hidalgo without having true majority support.
