In Marseille, stronghold of the right for 25 years, the ecologist Michèle Rubirola is eight points ahead of the candidate LR Martine Vassal. But it only has a relative majority which makes the election of the mayor of the city on July 3 uncertain.
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The green wave that swept across France swept across the Old Port on Sunday. The environmental candidate Michèle Rubirola came largely at the head of the second round in Marseille. But for Martine Vassal, the game is not over.
In the second city of France, the ultimate victory depends on the elections in each sector. Le Printemps marseillais won four, the right three, ex-PS senator Samia Ghali retaining hers in the northern districts.
Tranctations for the 3rd round
The doctor from the northern districts thwarted all forecasts. A few months ago, the town hall seemed inaccessible to Michèle Rubirola, unknown to the general public, chosen as head of the Printemps Marseillais list.
“It’s a relative victory for us, conceded Michèle Rubirola, but it’s a defeat for the right. “
“The ballot does not give us a clear verdict” more “no doubt we must see there the last signs of resistance from a system that the majority of Marseillais have rejected,” she added.
The environmental candidate believes that “the right is no longer able to govern”, denouncing a “electoral system by sectors which is a democratic misinterpretation”.
The left is able to return to the controls of the city which it directed 42 years under Gaston Defferre and Robert Vigouroux, but to take the chair of Jean-Claude Gaudin it must concretize the union around Michèle Rubirola, in particular with Samia Ghali, in the third round of the election.
Martine Vassal still wants to believe it
And the mayor of 15-16 will sell his rally dearly. “Tonight, Marseille can no longer be done without the northern districts”, she warned.
What give hope to Martine Vassal. “I have not lost, this evening there is no majority in Marseille”, but one “deadlock”, protested the loser, hinting at a week of fierce power struggle between now and the first meeting of the new city council, set for July 3.
The victory seemed however all acquired to Martine Vassal, strong woman of the metropolis and the department, dubbed by the outgoing mayor.
Even in the “captive” stronghold of Jean-Claude Gaudin, the 4th sector, the leader of the Republicans, suffered a bitter defeat. The candidate of Printemps Marseillais Olivia Fortin exceeded it by three points, 42% against 39%.
It is, according to her, the consequence of “the stubbornness of a minor candidate”, the former president of Aix-Marseille University, Yvon Berland (LREM).
The end of the reign of the right in Marseille
Will Michèle Rubirola leave her patients to treat the ills of Marseillais? Can she really see herself in Jean-Claude Gaudin’s chair? She herself expressed her doubts during the visit of Eric Piolle, the mayor of Grenoble: “I don’t know, I’m not ready”, she had recognized.
His success in the second round was a surprise, as was his appointment as head of the Printemps Marseillais. Socialist Benoît Payan already saw himself leading the battle for reconquest, but critics led him to give up.
At 63, here is Michèle Rubirola propelled to the front of the national scene. By a double feat. She is the one who ends 25 years of reign of the right in Marseille. She is also in a position to become the first woman to head the second city in France.
Michèle Rubirola, head of Marseille Printemps list
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© TOMASELLI Antoine/MaxPPP
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Activist among the Greens since 2002
The left, green and citizen coalition from Marseille took advantage of the green wave that spread to other big cities like Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Lyon.
Michèle Rubirola has been campaigning with the Greens since 2002. She stayed there until EELV suspended her for her involvement in the Printemps Marseillais.
But in Marseille, the union of the left mainly benefited from the division of the right, marked by the candidacy of Senator LR Bruno Gilles, and suspicions of proxy fraud on the part of the LR list which marred this end of campaign.
A third round for an armchair at the town hall
“This second ballot confirmed the clear push to the left” of the first round, where the lists of the union of the left of Michèle Rubirola had created the surprise, doubling the right of Martine Vassal, agreed in a statement the outgoing mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin, figure of the Republicans at the head of the city since 1995.
But this ballot “did not lead to a real majority to clearly designate my successor at the head of our city”, he emphasizes.
Municipal 2020: the votes for the Vassal lists in the different sectors of Marseille.
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© FTV
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The ballot in Marseille takes place by sectors and the majority by popular suffrage does not automatically offer a majority to the municipal council, which must elect the mayor during a “third round”, by secret ballot.
Martine Vassal will sit on this municipal council, but his defeat in a 4th sector, where Jean-Claude Gaudin was always re-elected in the first round, weakens the right and adds an unknown as for the choice of the mayor of the second city of France.
Municipal 2020: the votes for the Rubirola lists on the sectors of Marseille.
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© FTV
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Marseille Spring wins four sectors : the 1st with Sophie Camard, the 2nd with Benoît Payan, the 3rd with Michèle Rubirola and 4th with Olivia Fortin.
The LR lists were imposed in the 5th sector, 6th and 7th taken up at the National Gathering by General Galtier. The senator Samia Ghali saves his town hall in the 8th sector. The dissident LR Bruno Gilles finds himself in the position to referee the 3rd round.
Municipal 2020: the votes for the Bruno Gilles lists on certain sectors of Marseille.
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© FTV
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Broken in electoral contests, Jean-Claude Gaudin, tutelary figure of a line hitherto hegemonic to the city, the metropolis, the department and the region, leaves a line in pieces, but also assures, too, that “nothing is played”.
Before hanging up the gloves, at 80 years old, he launched, on Sunday evening, a final call with his feet to “eleven elected from yesterday’s minority lists”, those of the dissident Bruno Gilles and especially of Samia Ghali, summoned to choose “between the further development of the city and the withdrawal to the errors of the past and the decline”.
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