‘Don’t worry about me,’ says former first lady
Print Edition
In her first public appearance since the French president broke up with her, Valerie Trierweiler bristled yesterday when she was asked about her future during a charity visit to India.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said.
Trierweiler did not address the scandal directly during a news conference with aid group Action Against Hunger. But in response to a reporter’s question about how she feels about her future life, Trierweiler, 48, said she was not sure what the years will bring.
“I don’t know,” she said in some of her first public comments since the scandal erupted earlier this month. “I have time, there are some years to come. I will see bit by bit. For now I am not foreseeing anything. In any case, don’t worry about me.”
She acknowledged her days as first lady were over, but she refused to talk about her accomplishments in the role.
“I don’t know if it’s for me to judge, or for you,” Trierweiler said. “I was there for 19 months. I was able to discover people whom I hadn’t known. I understood that you can be useful, and in being useful to others you can be useful to yourself.”
Earlier, Trierweiler spent the day cuddling children in a public hospital in Mumbai.
The former first lady arrived in Mumbai on Sunday evening on a long-planned trip that has provided her with an escape from the scandal. She has been the subject of intense media interest after being hospitalized earlier this month with what aides described as shock and the blues following a tabloid’s publication of photos it said proved President Francois Hollande was having an affair with an actress.
On Saturday, Hollande announced their seven-year relationship was over. Yesterday, the link to Trierweiler’s first lady page on the presidential website was shut down.
Trierweiler, a journalist who has three children from a previous marriage, said it was agonizing to see children suffer.
After the hospital visit, Trierweiler posted a photograph of a mother and child in a message on her Twitter account that read: “Alongside ACF (Action Against Hunger) in India to fight malnutrition. A child dies of hunger every 30 seconds.”
As reporters followed Trierweiler’s every move in Mumbai, French TV switched to coverage of Hollande’s trip to Turkey, with one all-news channel showing a banner on the screen reading “First Trip of a Single President.”
In France, Hollande is facing a wave of discontent over his economic policies. On Sunday, some 17,000 people marched in Paris to denounce high taxes, high unemployment and economic stagnation.
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