France PM under fire for chairing town hall meeting amid cyclone crisis

France's new Prime Minister Francois Bayrou Tuesday fended off a torrent of criticism after he chaired a provincial town hall meeting as the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte grappled with the devastation of a cyclone.

The controversy erupted less than a week after Bayrou was named as the sixth prime minister of President Emmanuel Macron's mandate with the task of ending months of political crisis.

The veteran centrist had already ruffled some feathers by insisting that he would keep his post as mayor of the southwestern city of Pau while serving as prime minister.

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Bayrou went to Pau Monday evening to attend the town hall meeting where he confirmed that he would stay on in the post that he has held for the last decade.

His presence there meant he had to attend a meeting called by Macron on the Mayotte crisis by video. Hundreds are feared to have died in the storm.

French National Assembly speaker Yael Braun-Pivet, a member of Macron's centrist party, criticised the trip to Pau.

"In the face of such a catastrophe — of a kind that has not been seen on French territory for decades — it is important to be side-by-side with the people.

"I would have preferred that the prime minister, instead of taking a plane for Pau, took a plane for Mamoudzou," she told Franceinfo radio, referring to Mayotte's capital.

The head of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) in parliament Mathilde Panot said that after "20 years of the politics of abandonment" of Mayotte, Bayrou "did not understand the symbol" he had sent by going to Pau.

On the right, Republicans (LR) MP Thibault Bazin said that the municipal council could have "done without" the presence of its mayor" given the events in Mayotte and the urgency of France needing a 2025 budget.

But quizzed about the trip in parliament, Bayrou defended his travel to Pau and remaining its mayor, saying "we do not have the right to separate the province and the circle of power in Paris".

"Pau is in France," he argued.

"I chaired the municipal council of my city... and I consider that, in doing so, I was also carrying out my responsibility as a citizen," he added.

Bayrou sparked further controversy by declaring "it is not customary for the prime minister and the president to leave the national territory at the same time." Macron has said he will go to Mayotte. But critics pointed out that Mayotte as an overseas territory is an integral part of France.