“Hypocrite, candid, and tenacious.” This is how Amélie Oudéa-Castéra’s personality was summed up on January 18 by a former ENA classmate. Caught up in a controversy surrounding the education of her children at the Stanislas private school, the Minister of Education then showed the extent of her temperament. Hypocrite, when she calls into question public education to justify the registration of her offspring in the very conservative Parisian school. Candid, when she apologizes and invokes her status as “mom” to soften public opinion. In politics, blood attracts sharks, not doctors. Tenacious, as the former tennis champion never gives up. Like this February 6, when she responded to the opposition’s attacks in the Assembly… and took care to speak of herself in the future tense.
Candor and tenacity were of no help. Emmanuel Macron has resolved to pull the plug on AOC, relegated this Thursday to the rank of simple Minister of Sports. This position that she has held successfully since the summer of 2022 and which led her to rue de Grenelle. How laborious was this retrograde! The head of state has long hoped to save his fellow student from the ENA, whose efficiency he praises. In mid-January, he still intended to keep it in Education and add a delegate minister in charge of Sports and the organization of the Paris Olympic Games. But reality imposed itself on the president. Amélie Oudéa-Castéra could no longer carry an educational public policy. AOC has become bogged down in controversies and has multiplied communication errors. The enarch spoke with the agility of one struggling in quicksand. The messenger overwrote the message. “She is inaudible and cannot regain control,” said a minister this Thursday.
“She is hindered”
Emmanuel Macron took note of this this weekend. “She is hampered,” he confides to a close friend. “She no longer has the capacity to bounce back. Teachers, unions, public opinion, we don’t see how she will bounce back.” This rebound is, however, vital in a ministry that places priority at the top of the State. But there’s no question of letting go of AOC. The president then expressed his desire to return her to Sports, where she did well. Many of the Head of State’s interlocutors consider the idea preposterous and express their doubts to him. The president persists: “I want to keep it in Sports.”
Downgrade it yes, get rid of it no. Oudéa-Castéra, or the bad conscience of Macronie. Oh, no one holds this austere technician and novice in politics in their heart. She has no bodyguards or friends willing to die for her. She works and “delivers”, as we say in Macronist newspeak. A minister keeps in mind a trip by car with the minister, and this unpleasant feeling of having made the trip alone: “She is totally in her bubble.”
But a form of embarrassment grips Macronie when her name is mentioned. “I hate manhunts”, “She has done nothing illegal”, “I will not shoot at the ambulance”… Ministers and deputies mock in unison the relentlessness against a woman who has committed nothing illegal and is not the subject of any legal investigation. “We rightly criticize her for being clumsy, but we also criticize her for what she is and what she embodies. It’s not healthy,” confides a Renaissance manager. “She was clumsy, but would we take her out on that?”, recently asked a member of the majority. In short, we deplore the lack of proportionality between the fault committed and the sanction incurred.
“She suffers martyrdom”
These empathetic presentations are always followed by a “but”. On the triumph of the ethics of responsibility over that of conviction. No, AOC can no longer exercise her office. “Can she still embody something?, questions a minister. How does she embody authority? Secularism? Nothing has come of what she wants since she was appointed.” “She must move on for the effectiveness of her ministry,” adds a Renaissance executive. The minister was recruited for her performance, this requirement is her grave.
In Macronie, many draw a parallel between Amélie Oudéa-Castera and François de Rugy, exfiltrated from the Ministry of Ecology in 2019 for overly luxurious dinners. The scenario is identical: a communication error with a heavy symbolic charge; a media whirlwind; new revelations which turn the minister into a commentator on his own decline. The ending of the film couldn’t have been any different. A very contemporary story. “Fifteen years ago, without social networks and news channels, this would have been a news story in the press,” judges a minister. Jean-François Copé knows AOC and her husband well, who, like him, spent time in ministerial offices in his youth. The ex-president of LR theorizes his fall: “At the start of a government, there is always a person who makes a mistake and sinks into quicksand.” Cursed fate.
Amélie Oudéa-Castéra’s ministerial adventure does not end this Thursday. Strange paradox. This sacrificed minister will take the media spotlight, thanks to the Olympic Games. But in what state ? A former colleague recently spoke of a woman “on the verge of a nervous breakdown”. “She is suffering martyrdom,” adds a minister. A political friend of Emmanuel Macron warned the head of state. “It’s no longer the same AOC that you will find, it will no longer have the momentum it had before the controversies.” The president has removed a thorn in his side. History will tell if he didn’t push it into the other.
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