The centrist Geneviève Darrieussecq, appointed minister delegate in charge of the disabled after having assumed the portfolio of Memory and Veterans Affairs, is a faithful of François Bayrou, who entered politics late after a career as a doctor.

Native of the Landes, this 66-year-old allergist, deeply attached to her South-West, joined the UDF (renamed MoDem in 2007) and became regional councilor for Aquitaine in 2004.

Geneviève Darrieussecq then successively conquered the municipal, inter-municipal, regional and departmental levels, before winning in 2017 a seat as deputy of the Landes to which she was re-elected in the last legislative elections.

In 2008, she created a surprise by managing to break the PS hegemony in the Landes and robbed the Socialists of the town hall of Mont-de-Marsan, on the left for 46 years. The Montois re-elected her in 2014. Deemed affable, natural and accessible by her supporters, she was criticized for brittle, even authoritarian manners by her detractors.

In 2021, during the regional elections, this rugby fan unsuccessfully led a rally bringing together the four formations of the presidential majority – LREM, Modem, Agir, Territoires de Progrès? as well as the UDI and the Radical Movement in an attempt to dethrone the socialist boss of New Aquitaine Alain Rousset.

In 2017, after supporting Alain Juppé during the right-wing primary, Geneviève Darrieussecq was appointed Secretary of State for Veterans in the government of Edouard Philippe, then promoted to Minister Delegate by Jean Castex.

For five years, she faithfully implemented President Macron’s memorial roadmap: encouraging local elected officials to name public places with the names of African fighters who died for France, managing sensitive files linked to Algeria, such as the recognition of the Harkis, those French Muslims? up to 200,000 men – recruited as auxiliaries of the French army during the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962) and abandoned by France at the end of this conflict.

In particular, she worked on the adoption of a law of “recognition” and “reparation” towards the Harkis, promulgated on February 23 after being announced by Emmanuel Macron in September 2021. The French president had then asked “pardon” to the Harkis on behalf of France for their lived “tragedy”.

At the end of the Algerian war, several tens of thousands of Harkis and their families, transferred to France, were parked in “transit and reclassification camps” managed by the French army, with unworthy and traumatic living conditions. , some surrounded by barbed wire and placed under surveillance.

During her time at the ministry, Ms. Darrieussecq notably launched a memorial project at the site in the south of France of a former one of these camps, considering that the French Republic “has not lived up to its values” in these Harkis camps.

04/07/2022 12:58:57 –         Paris (AFP) –         © 2022 AFP