Amara's show rolls on despite Sarkozy blow to suburban plans

Published on Tuesday 22 January 2008 21:02

FRANCE'S junior minister for urban affairs has no secondary school diploma, routinely shocks the establishment with her use of slang and scorn of protocol – and insists on living in her old, no-frills apartment instead of the elegant quarters normally granted to government members.

She talks back to her bosses and, when touring troubled housing schemes, the daughter of Algerian immigrants breaks into Arabic. Yesterday was meant to be Fadela Amara's big day, the unveiling of a key part of president Nicolas Sarkozy's vision for France: a so-called Marshall Plan for suburban housing schemes, which exploded in a three-week burst of anger in November 2005.

Mr Sarkozy stole his minister's thunder – deciding to announce the plan himself next month. But he did not dent her determination to attack the ills plaguing France's housing schemes and bring their residents, many of them Arab or black children or grandchildren of immigrants long cloistered in blight, into the mainstream.

Yesterday, she was applauded like a rock star at a forum in Vaulx-en-Velin, a rough suburb of Lyon. Some 1,500 packed a hall where she laid out her proposals.

"We cannot continue like this. We cannot be satisfied with pasting, plastering and urgent band-aids," said Ms Amara. She told them that what was needed was a policy "that fits with the France of today … a mixed-race republic proud of its diversity."

Employment, education and transport are the plan's themes, for an overall price tag, she has said, of 1 billion (750 million). "I believe in this, even if it is the zillionth plan," said Martial Zibi, 30, an unemployed graduate from Bordeaux.

"I think things can really move with someone like Fadela Amara," said Claude Pommelet, an unemployed 21-year-old from Le Havre.

Ms Amara was born into ghetto life in central France, one of ten children. A racist remark by a police officer after her five-year-old brother was fatally struck by a car was a turning point, propelling her into activist pursuit of justice. An elder brother, meanwhile, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for murder.

The dishevelled 43-year-old is among a few cabinet members with origins in France's former African colonies, but the only one who loudly, and proudly, proclaims her roots.

With Ms Amara, a leftist at heart, the conservative Mr Sarkozy may have got more than he bargained for in appointing her.

"I'm under the orders of no-one," she has said.

Sarkozy: no marriage yet

ITALIAN singer and ex-model Carla Bruni, 40, said in an interview yesterday she was "not yet" married to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, putting an end to speculation they had tied the knot in secret.

She said they were planning to wed, but gave no further details.