Oh, certainly, everyone can make Olivier Véran’s reconversion their little political-moral analysis. He, who was not the last of the lesson-givers when he was minister, will therefore devote his art to aesthetic medicine, what’s more in a very chic clinic? Bad type… It looks like Cahuzac… Frankly, he should have returned to his native neurology in public hospitals where there is a shortage of arms; especially if he wants to continue to exist in political life. And then this way of justifying oneself – I will only work very part-time, will limit myself to certain practices, will continue to give time to selfless causes… – it’s ridiculous…
Either. We have the right to laugh, to climb the hangers or to make fun of it like our first Botox injection. It’s everyone’s business and it will pass like the rest. What, on the other hand, deserves more objective attention relates to the true subtext of this affair: ultimately, what we reproach Véran for is his impurity, the betrayal of his apostolate, the compromise of his soul. . In other words, we do not have the right to move from one world to another. When we give ourselves to the general interest, it is for life. Shame on anyone who crosses the border, especially if it’s for a few dollars more.
Clearly, France has a problem with other people’s money in addition to a boundless appetite for denouncing their turpitudes. In this respect, we can never say enough that there is, in the torquemade style of Anticor, Mediapart or LFI, the symptom and the cause of a calamitous regression of minds to their most archaic component: that of base instincts, sad passions, accusatory violence and automatisms of thought, with the corollary of the impossibility of even truly thinking; for example to the (general) interest that society could have in leaving the servants of the State free to leave it to lead other lives without having to fear tar and feathers.
Pompidou was right
The question nevertheless deserves to be asked, especially if we see the immense difficulty that the community has in attracting the best of its children to it (and not only to join its government or to be elected in its parliamentary enclosures). ). Since we cannot pay them well, is it not suicidal for us to work to block their horizons? Wouldn’t it be happy if we let them, with a light heart, devote themselves to public affairs as long as they still have the taste for it, and admit as one of the terms of the normal equation that some of them can day want to change creamery, or even seek higher remuneration? Why should public service be a lifelong commitment, a perpetual vocation? Why should we deny that we change, that we age, that our desires evolve just as much as our needs? That we may at times want something else for ourselves; learn new professions, find freedom, make ourselves useful in other ways, live more comfortably, overcome our frustrations – God knows the State makes them – overcome our disappointments; sometimes our failures? Why should clean money be dirty?
Of course, safeguards are necessary, above all to prevent a few black sheep from misusing their public power for personal purposes by favoring a company whose employment they are sneakily seeking. But they are already built, with the High Authority for the transparency of public life in the lead; probably even a little too high. The subject is really not there. What is of entirely different importance is our collective state of mind, our lost ability to look beyond the tip of our noses with which we furiously adore sniffing out bad odors and tirelessly making them known.
Georges Pompidou was right: we must stop annoying the French. This is generally true. In particular – everyone benefits – this should also apply to public officials. And even for ministers.
* Constitutionalist and professor of law at the University of Pau
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