CABANA. She is the one who has shared the life of Jean-Michel Blanquer for two years. Anna Cabana has become the wife of the Minister of National Education. But who is she?
It’s a controversy within a controversy. Less than the main one, certainly, but which casts opprobrium on a profession already decried and observed with suspicion by a large part of the population. While Jean-Michel Blanquer has been in turmoil since Monday evening and the revelations of Médiapart which indicate that the Minister of National Education was in Ibiza from December 28 to January 2, a few days before a new school year marked a strong rebound from the Covid-19 epidemic, a resort from which he detailed, on the eve of the resumption, the new health protocol (since amended) applicable in schools through an interview with Le Parisien, it is now his wife who is the subject of strong criticism. Because if she was first put on the front of the stage on Tuesday January 18 by Le Parisien who revealed her marriage to the boss of teachers on January 15, she was then targeted for having moderated a debate on television on… the controversy surrounding her husband.
Because the companion of Jean-Michel Blanquer is Anna Cabana, political journalist passed by Marianne, Point or even the JDD, regular speaker on BFM-TV and now presenter of a program on the channel i24News. Tuesday evening, she indeed returned, with speakers, to the hectic start to the week of the Minister of National Education, in his program “Conversations”, of which she is editor-in-chief. If she did not take part in the exchanges during the 13 minutes granted to the subject and was content to organize the discussions, the sequence made people cringe. Because the presenter never clarified her links with the protagonist of the conversations. But she defends herself from this situation: “What would I have been told if I had not, yesterday, dealt with the current event of the day, that is to say the political crisis around Jean- Michel Blanquer? It looked like I’m not doing my job. Not doing this debate seemed surreal to me. You can imagine that all the questions have arisen [mardi] morning”, she assures the Figaro.
To suspicions of lack of ethics, the 42-year-old woman retorts her professionalism and her perspective during the positions taken: “I am the leader of conversations, I am not an editorialist. In this program, I give the floor to my interlocutors without directing my questions. […] My job is that I’m a journalist who hosts a news show. So I’m doing this job in the way that I think is the most honest way possible. I did it without directing anything, considering that everything could and should be said”. A journalist for nearly twenty years, Anna Cabana says she has paid “a gigantic price” for her relationship with Jean-Michel Blanquer, stopping her interventions on BFM-TV which she had been doing since 2013 and handing over her position as political editor to the JDD in 2020.
Journalists in a relationship with ministers, the situation is not new. Before the Cabana-Blanquer duo, other episodes caused ink to flow in the newspapers. Léa Salamé and Raphaël Glucksmann or Isabelle Saporta and Yannick Jadot for the most recent, without forgetting Valérie Trierweiler and François Hollande, Anne Sinclair and Dominique Strauss-Khan, Christine Ockrent and Bernard Kouchener, or even, more briefly, Marie Drucker and François Baroin, Audrey Pulvar and Arnaud Montebourg. Without being a minister, Thomas Sotto is also in a relationship with Mayada Boulos, communications director for the Prime Minister. Examples of these perilous liaisons are legion and arouse all the more comments at a time of daily indignation on social networks.
Should Anna Cabana have stepped back from her show? “What I am ready to give up doing is what my employer considers detrimental to the image of the channel, that is to say political commentary in the editorial”, she defends herself, highlighting her role of organizer of the debates and not of commentator. Before her, some have however released their functions, all the more in time of campaign: Thomas Sotto has given up presenting “Elysée 2022” on France 2 and Léa Salamé had also withdrawn from “The political program” on the same channel during the European elections. On the other hand, some had hidden their links with politicians. Not without discrediting, thus, a profession in which only 30% of the population trusts, one of the lowest rates of the major countries.
Anna Cabana as a couple with Jean-Michel Blanquer
To say that she is discreet and that their relationship is secret is an understatement. Despite their common notoriety, she a seasoned political journalist, him one of the most important ministers of Emmanuel Macron, Anna Cabana and Jean-Michel Blanquer manage to live a married life far from prying eyes. Between the two, it’s not just a crush. Because The Parisian announcement, Tuesday January 18, 2022, that the forties and the 57-year-old minister were married on the weekend of January 15 and 16 in front of a small number of guests. The daily indicates that “few people, even among their relatives, have been taken into the confidence of this official union”. The main concerned, nor their entourage, have not confirmed the union. But since 2020, Anna Cabana has been the companion of Jean-Michel Blanquer, as revealed, in July of that year, here is.
After a first marriage celebrated in 2009, Anna Cabana, 42, separated from her former companion to live a new story with Jean-Michel Blanquer, 57. While the relationship wasn’t revealed until the summer of 2020, the two had been dating since February, according to here is. If nothing has filtered on the origin of their meeting, the former rector of academy would have had “a real thunderbolt” for the ex-political journalist, according to the people magazine. To the point of also leaving his ex-wife, with whom he had three children. Since then, Anna Cabana and Jean-Michel Blanquer never appear together in public.
A trip with Jean-Michel Blanquer to Ibiza?
Monday, January 17, 2022, Mediapart revealed that Jean-Michel Blanquer had unveiled the back-to-school health protocol in an interview given to the Parisian Saturday January 1 from… Ibiza. A news that caused an outcry in the opposition and among national education personnel, in the midst of a health crisis. Nothing says if he was accompanied by his future wife or not. The minister’s entourage simply told the Parisian that he was “in Ibiza in a private setting, with longtime friends who own a house there”, from December 28 to January 2. If the presence of Anna Cabana on the Balearic island has therefore not been confirmed, she was indeed present in Paris on the weekend of January 15: it is indeed at the town hall of the fifth arrondissement of the capital that the couple said “yes”, according to here is.
Biography of Anna Cabana
Anna Cabana was born in Montpellier (Hérault) on August 6, 1979. After her studies in hypokhâgne at Henri IV, she embarked on journalism and joined the editorial staff of Marianne at 23 years old. For five years, she wrote for the magazine and then went to work at Point where she will remain ten years, to the point of becoming a great reporter. With always the same specialty: politics. His pen opens to him the doors of the Sunday newspaper where she was recruited as political editor in August 2016. A position she will hold until 2020. In parallel, she is a columnist on France Inter (2010 to 2013) and regular speaker on BFM TV (since 2013), which makes it one of its headliners with its political editorials. But when her relationship with Jean-Michel Blanquer was announced, the journalist withdrew from the news channel and left the political section of the JDD to join that of books.
In parallel with her activity as a journalist, Anna Cabana has written several books, including Cecilia in 2008, on the one who was still Cécilia Sarkozy at the time, but also Villepin: the vertical of the madman (2010), or even two works on Alain Juppé: Juppé, pride and revenge (2011) and A fantasy called Juppé (2016). She also writes Between two fires in 2012 about the relationship between François Hollande, Ségolène Royal and Valérie Trierweiler.
Before meeting Jean-Michel Blanquer, Anna Cabana, born Bitton, had been married to Yves Cabana, son of the senior civil servant (prefect, chief of staff at the Prefecture of Paris) and former Senator and ex-Minister of Chirac Camille Cabana. After a marriage in 2009, they had a child in 2015 before separating.