Sarkozy names 15-member govt: Seven women, socialist among ministers
PARIS, May 18: French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday unveiled a 15-minister government that includes seven women and the leftwing human rights champion Bernard Kouchner as foreign minister.
Sarkozy demonstrated his declared aim of breaking with France's political past by giving half the cabinet jobs to women, reaching out across the political divide, and including a minister of North African origin.
The new team, announced a day after the right-wing president named Francois Fillon as prime minister to lead his sweeping reform drive, is a radically slimmed down administration that remodels several key ministries.
With the women ministers, France has now joined Chile, Finland, Spain and Sweden in seeking to end male domination of politics by creating gender parity in government.
The appointment of Sarkozy's election campaign spokeswoman Rachida Dati at the justice ministry makes her the first politician of North African origin to hold a top French government post.
France has millions of immigrants of Arab and African origin, but they are barely represented in national politics, and their lack of integration into French society led to nationwide riots in late 2005.
The appointment of Kouchner, a doctor-turned-politician who backed Sarkozy's Socialist rival Segolene Royal in the election campaign, infuriated the left who responded by saying he would be expelled from the Socialist Party.
Kouchner, founder of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity, is a former UN High Representative in Kosovo and one of France's most popular politicians.
The Socialists accuse Sarkozy of seeking to destabilise their party, which has lost three successive presidential elections, while deriding Kouchner's appointment, saying the president will keep key foreign policy for himself.
The new government, half the size of the cabinet under Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac, also includes centrists, with two more leftwingers in junior posts.
Alain Juppe, a prime minister under Chirac, returns as government number two at the helm of a new super-ministry for environment, sustainable development and energy.
Juppe was given a one-year suspended sentence in 2004 for abusing public funds, as the highest profile figure to be punished in a finance scandal that hit the main centre-right party in the 1990s and could still affect Chirac.
His conviction forced him to leave politics for several years.
Former employment minister Jean-Louis Borloo became minister for the economy, finance and employment, a new portfolio to spearhead Sarkozy's economic reform drive.
Ex-defence minister Michele Alliot-Marie got Sarkozy's former job at the interior ministry, a tough posting given the social unrest in the high-immigration suburbs in recent years.
Christine Lagarde, a corporate lawyer once listed as one of the world's most powerful women by Forbes magazine, became agriculture minister. As international trade minister in the last government, she was responsible for negotiating France's position in fraught world trade talks.
Close Sarkozy aide Brice Hortefeux takes charge of the controversial new immigration and national identity ministry, while Herve Morin, of presidential candidate Francois Bayrou's centrist UDF party, was named defence minister.
Meanwhile Sarkozy flew to Toulouse in the southwest, where he told union representatives at the troubled Airbus aircraft maker that the state would do “its duty” as a shareholder if parent company EADS needed to raise fresh capital.
The new government is expected to quickly roll out a raft of measures to cut taxes, keep trains running during strikes and relax France's 35-hour working week.
But Fillon must first lead his UMP party into parliamentary elections in June hoping for the majority needed to push through the reforms in the eurozone's second biggest economy.
Most opinion polls say the UMP will easily win that majority.
Fillon on Friday, in his first official visit, dropped in to a Paris shelter for women in difficulties, where he told residents that stopping violence against women would be a “top priority” for him.—AFP
