A Good-News Photo Op Becomes Embarrassing for French Ministers
It was apparently just a little summertime spinning with the aid of a grocery chain, but Luc Chatel, the education minister and government spokesman, found himself in some hot water over a supposedly staged visit to a quiet supermarket on Monday.Journalists accompanying Mr. Chatel and Hervé Novelli, the secretary of state for commerce, on a trip to an Intermarché supermarket in Villeneuve-le-Roi, southeast of Paris, became suspicious when the aisles were suddenly filled with well-dressed, articulate women eager to praise a government freeze on the price of some school supplies before the new school year began.
One of the women was Virginie Meyniel, a local politician allied with the governing center-right party, who said she just happened to be in the store and also happens to help oversee schools for her town, Vulaines-sur-Seine, 30 miles away.
The radio station France Inter raised questions, and the newspaper Libération had a detailed article on Wednesday headlined, “Supercherie au Supermarché,” or “Hoax at the Supermarket.” It described how some of the women left the store together in a car after the minister left, without buying anything and leaving their school supplies in shopping baskets.
The journalists said that the store was empty a half-hour before the officials arrived, and that 15 minutes before they came about a dozen women entered the store together.
