Brigitte Barèges is used to keeping a smile in all circumstances. It will certainly be tense, all the same, this Tuesday afternoon when arriving at the Palais de Justice in Toulouse. The mayor LR of Montauban will know a little more about her political fate since the Criminal Court of Toulouse will deliver its deliberation in the context of the case of embezzlement of public funds and fictitious employment for which she appeared there two months. Brigitte Barèges can very well be relaxed or come out without being mayor anymore. from the first town of Tarn-et-Garonne.
The issue of provisional execution at the heart of this hearing
He is accused of having, during the municipal campaign of 2014, used the means of the town hall to be re-elected. In particular, she would have paid a city agent to write complimentary articles about his work in the small newspaper. Brigitte Barèges, presumed innocent, had appeared in the company of her former communications officer, her former chief of staff and the director of the publication. The Montalbanese mayor had accused the coup upon hearing the prosecutor’s requisitions: up to two years in prison, a fine of 15,000 euros and above all a five-year ineligibility sentence.
Requests all the more severe as the public prosecutor had also requested provisional execution.
If this is pronounced by the judge this Tuesday afternoon with a penalty of ineligibility, Brigitte Barèges can no longer be mayor of Montauban. This is what happened a few months ago to the mayor of Gaillac in the Tarn. Patrice Gausserand who had, barely reelected and overnight, left the chair.
Provisional execution, it was also she who sent Patrick Balkany to prison for the first time, she who immediately condemned the mayor of Levallois-Perret to ineligibility. Judges seem less and less timid to use it in politico-judicial matters. Suffice to say that in a city prefecture and concerning a political figure like Brigitte Barèges, it would have the effect of a bomb. According to our information, plan B in the event of immediate ineligibility has been studied. The mayor of Montauban is not judged by the same magistrates as the mayor of Gaillac. On the other hand, she has the same lawyer as Patrice Gausserand, Me Laurent De Caunes.
The political future of Brigitte Barèges in question
No one, neither his relatives nor his opponents, doubts it. Brigitte Barèges is a fighter who can very well be relaxed this afternoon, but who will appeal anyway if she is ineligible. Two scenarios are possible in this case.
The first: there is no provisional execution and the mandates she exercises – mayor and departmental councilor – Brigitte Barèges keeps them by appealing. It happened to many elected officials who were able to play the “judicial watch” and multiply the remedies.
Second scenario, provisional execution. There, Brigitte Barèges is no longer mayor. The board can elect a replacement or collectively resign by calling for new elections. She is no longer either a departmental councilor and irony of political life, it is Pierre Mardegan her deputy but LREM opponent in the last municipal elections, who could take the place.
Brigitte Barèges plays all the bigger as she intends to represent herself in the departmental and put a grain of salt in the regional ones. Today she denies the idea of a joint list with Robert Ménard, but it is the decision of the judges, this Tuesday in Toulouse, which will condition everything.
–
