Rama Yade quits Ambassador post

The popular former sports minister Rama Yade has left her new role as French Ambassador to UNESCO after just six months.

Published: 16 June 2011 09:16 CEST

Marie-Lan Nguyen

Yade told AFP that she wanted her freedom back. “I have written to the President to say I would like to leave this role without damaging the interests of France.” She said she expects to meet the President on Friday or Saturday.

34-year old Yade is one of the most popular politicians in France. A poll in May published by Le Point-IPSOS gave her a 50% satisfaction rating, putting her in seventh place. The list was topped by Paris city mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, who scored 54%.

Yade has been a controversial figure since she joined the government. Once a favourite of President Sarkozy, she angered him in 2009 when she declined his request to run for a seat in the European Parliament. It’s believed that his anger led to her being moved from the Foreign Ministry to her job as sports minister. Once there, she had a difficult relationship with the senior minister, Roselyne Bachelot, particularly after the French football team performed disastrously in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

She took up her new role in December 2010 but has been publicly rebuked on several occasions for her behaviour. Government spokesman François Baroin told a press conference in April that she ought to show more reserve if she was going to continue in her ambassador role.

Yade said she now plans to focus her efforts on supporting Jean-Louis Borloo in the elections for 2012. Borloo left the government in late 2010 after failing to get the job of Prime Minister and is believed to be planning a bid for the Presidency.

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France has in recent weeks been shaken by a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, in particularly the fatal beating earlier this month of Shemseddine, 15, outside Paris.

The far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party has accused Attal of not doing enough on security as the anti-immigration party soars ahead of the government coalition in polls for the June 9th election.

Speaking in Viry-Chatillon, the town where Shemseddine was killed, Attal condemned the “addiction of some of our adolescents to violence”, calling for “a real surge of authority… to curb violence”.

“There are twice as many adolescents involved in assault cases, four times more in drug trafficking, and seven times more in armed robberies than in the general population,” he said.

Measures will include expanding compulsory school attendance to all the days of the week from 8am to 6pm for children of collège age (11 to 15).

“In the day the place to be is at school, to work and to learn,” said Attal, who was also marking 100 days in office since being appointed in January by President Emmanuel Macron to turn round the government’s fortunes.

Parents needed to take more responsibility, said Attal, warning that particularly disruptive children would have sanctions marked on their final grades.

OPINION: No, France is not suffering an unprecedented wave of violence

Promoting an old-fashioned back-to-basics approach to school authority, he said “You break something – you repair it. You make a mess – you clear it up. And if you disobey – we teach you respect.”

Attal also floated the possibility of children in exceptional cases being denied the right to special treatment on account of their minority in legal cases.

Thus 16-year-olds could be forced to immediately appear in court after violations “like adults”, he said. In France, the age of majority is 18, in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Macron and Attal face an uphill struggle to reverse the tide ahead of the European elections. Current polls point to the risk of a major debacle that would overshadow the rest of the president’s second mandate up to 2027.

A poll this week by Ifop-Fiducial showed the RN on 32.5 percent with the government coalition way behind on 18 percent.