BUSINESS
BLURRING THE LINES
A look back at the life and political times of Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the female French politician of Moroccan origin
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s is the case with most immigrants, duality seemed to follow Najat Vallaud-Belkacem throughout her life’s journey. When she became the first French woman to be appointed Minister of Education in 2014, she became the “face” of diversity for the liberals and a bullseye for the anti-immigration far-right. She supported same-sex marriage legislation and opposed the Burkini ban. She has stated that she is a non-practising Muslim but has also stated that she felt the pain of her fellow Muslims when there was a call to ban halal meat. She says she has always seen herself as French but has been criticised for holding dual Moroccan citizenship. Despite the challenges and unfavourable odds that were stacked against her, she managed to rise to the very top echelons of French political life. Najat Belkacem was born in 1977, in a Moroccan village near Nador in the Rif region. She is the second of seven children. In 1982, she arrived in France, aged four, with her mother and elder sister Fatiha, to join her father, a construction worker. The family lived on a deprived housing estate on the outskirts of the northern town of Amiens in the Somme. Since Najat’s parents did not have the right to vote, being non-citizens, politics was not a taking point in her household while growing up, except when the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen appeared on television. She did well in school and listened to Voltaire as much as the Berber songs of her parents. At the age of 18, she became a French national. She studied Political Science at France’s Institut d’études politiques de Paris, with scholarship, and graduated in 2002. It was while studying at this institute that Najat met Boris Vallaud, whom she married in 2005. Boris made a career as a civil servant with the federal government. In 2018, he was elected to the French National Assembly representing the Socialist Party. The couple have nine-year-old twins named Louis-Adel and Nour-Chloé Vallaud. After graduation, Najat worked as a jurist and was not particularly interested in a political career. Her professional destiny changed when in the 2002 presidential election, Le Pen shocked France by getting through to the final round. She did so by beating the Socialists, the party with which Najat had aligned herself. She became a candidate of the Socialist Party that same year and won her first election the following year as a city councillor in Lyon. She was invited
to join the team of Lyon’s mayor Gérard Collomb, and she soon made a reputation for herself based on her work against discrimination, for citizen’s rights, employment and housing. In 2004, she was elected to the Regional Council of RhoneAlpes where she chaired the Culture Commission until 2008. In 2005, she was appointed as an adviser to the Socialist Party. Besides politics, she contributed as a columnist for Télé Lyon Municipale’s cultural programme titled C’est tout vu. In 2008, came Najat’s first appointment at the national stage. She was made the spokesperson of Ségolène Royal’s unsuccessful campaign during the 2007 French presidential election. She returned to regional politics and successfully contested for the seat of conseillère générale of the Rhône department in the cantonal elections of 2008. When the next round of Presidential elections came around in 2012, Najat was once again in the national spotlight, this time as Hollande’s presidential campaign spokesperson. When he took office as President that same year, Najat was appointed to the cabinet as Minister for Women’s Affairs, City Affairs, youth and sport, as well as being the spokeswoman for the government. She was given charge of an important ministry in the context of Hollande’s campaign in which fighting discrimination was a much-touted objective. As its spokeswoman, she in a way became the face of the Hollande’s presidency. The spotlight attracted the attention of the right and far-right who attacked her dual nationality. “For ten years I’ve been totally engaged in serving the public good. I feel totally French – I don’t feel half-French because of my dual nationality. For me, dual nationality just means I don’t deny my roots,” she told the Guardian in 2012. This was just the beginning. Throughout the five-year period of the Hollande presidency, Najat was on the front line and suffered from a constant right-wing media and activist attacks where the line between the professional and the personal was blurred. It may have taken its toll on her, at least temporarily. At the beginning of this year, she announced that she would not contest the leadership of the Socialist Party at the Aubervilliers Congress. Instead, she moved to the private sector as Deputy Chief Executive Officer, “International research and social innovation” at Ipsos, one of the most prominent private research organisations. 2019 JAN / FEB
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