While the controversy swells around his vacation in Ibiza, where his interview with Parisian was recorded in which he detailed the health protocol of schools, Jean-Michel Blanquer was summoned to explain himself to the deputies. Atmosphere…
Yet another controversy that Jean-Michel Blanquer would have done well. At the start of the year, the Minister of National Education found himself under fire from critics, after announcing the new health protocol for schools the day before the start of the new school year. A dubious timing that had angered teachers and parents of students, especially since the interview given to the Parisian in which Jean-Michel Blanquer detailed the famous protocol was in paid access, reserved for subscribers. A succession of blunders which had encouraged the teaching staff to act. Nearly 78,000 people took to the streets, including 8,200 in Paris last Thursday, to protest against the government’s management of the health crisis in schools.
Strongly criticized, the Minister of National Education had also had to respond to claims concerning the vaccination of children, a highly contested measure. “We never made a decision in the light of hashtags. We rely on objective scientific criteria, drawn from the scientific council, the High Authority for Health and the French Society of Pediatrics“, he had declared in the columns of the JDD. While the minister was trying somehow to manage the annoyance of the teachers, now Mediapart was lighting a fire, which Jean-Michel Blanquer may have difficulty extinguishing. The interview given to Parisian and published just before the start of the school year would have been recorded from Ibiza, where the minister was spending his holidays. Information confirmed in stride by the ministry, which indicated that it “worked remotely“.
His response to MPs
On social networks, many political figures quickly called for his resignation. This Tuesday, during questions to the government in the National Assembly, the husband of Anna Cabana justified himself somehow: “It did not escape me that there was beyond the attack on politics, the attack on the person, and on the eventual subject of my vacation (…) Did I have the right to take a few days off after this year? Would the decisions have been different if I had been elsewhere? There is a symbolism, the place I chose, I should have chosen another. The symbolism, I regret it“. It remains to be seen whether this half-word mea culpa will be enough…