19 June 2007 Blog Home : June 2007 : Permalink
Ten, including Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, don't belong to the UMP party. Jean-Marie Bockel, a Socialist senator and mayor of the eastern city of Mulhouse, was named today a junior minister. Andre Santini, member of the New Center party, will be in charge of public servants, Valerie Letard, a centrist, will oversee ``solidarity and social affairs.''
In fact the Sarko government is distinctly different in cast to the usual one with a lot of female and dusky faces as well as all those different political outlooks, quite a change from the usual array of stodgy middleaged white males with an occasional token white female or (even more rarely) non-white male. As well as the above it also has another young immigrant female, Rama Yade, a young UMP rising star not dissimilar in background etc. to Justice Minister Rachida Dati and the reshuffle also means that Christine Lagarde, a lady who was the first female directer of US law firm Baker and Mckenzie, is now the finance minister.