“It’s the start of a more complex era. “This close friend of Pierre Hurmic, the environmentalist mayor of Bordeaux, elected last July in favor of the green wave of municipal elections, sums up the unease of these new city councilors, often inexperienced, who from Lyon to Strasbourg, from Bordeaux to Poitiers, have just been propelled to the controls of several large cities in the country.
Admittedly, Eric Piolle, the only green mayor to have been elected at the head of a large city in 2014, saw the people of Grenoble renew their confidence in him. But the distancing of Michèle Rubirola at the head of Marseille due to health problems but also to the scale of the task and internal tensions in her majority would sound almost like an alert …
First of all, there were the missteps of the first weeks of exercise of power. From the Tour de France, deemed “polluting” and “macho”, by Grégory Doucet, the mayor of Lyon, at the end of the traditional Christmas tree (“a dead tree”) decided by Pierre Hurmic, of the increase in compensation mayor of Bruno Bernard, the president of Lyon Métropole, to the cancellation by Jeanne Barseghian of the holding of a municipal council in Strasbourg, for “lack of preparation”, according to the mayor himself… There was no lack of blunders .
But there is worse. Barely a few months after taking office, these new mayors find themselves confronted with a dilemma: a gap between campaign promises and the realities of power all the more complicated to manage because the pressure of more radical members, their majority even their own party is proving strong.
The scolding of police unions in Bas-Rhin
In Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian discovers on Nadia Zourgui’s Facebook page, unconventional remarks for a Security Assistant, made just after the vote on the law on global security. “So if I summarize,” writes the elected green, the police can quietly enter a bar, a nightclub, a concert … Consume alcohol […] while being armed. Why would a policeman who is no longer on duty carry a weapon?… ”And to follow his message with the hashtag # nousnesommespasaufarwest… Faced with the anger of the police unions of Bas-Rhin but also of part of the left majority, the assistant removed her post. And the mayor of Strasbourg continues to support her, judging that she had spoken “in a private way”.
In Poitiers, it is on the thorny question of secularism that Léonore Moncond’huy had to swallow a few snakes, again from his own advisers. At the end of October, following a meeting between young people and Sarah El Haïry, the Secretary of State for Youth and Education, the 12th deputy mayor let go. For this elected Communist, the law of 2004 on the framing of religious symbols in the public space, would have “Islamophobic foundations. “While the controversy swells, the ecological mayor is content to say that she does not recognize herself in these words. Close the ban …
The green majority has cracked in Lyon
In Bordeaux, the moderate Pierre Hurmic must deal with Philippe Poutou, leader of the NPA, the New Anti-Capitalist Party, elected in the Gironde capital and the left wing embodied by some of his deputies. “Even within the city council, things are not going very well. It does not crack yet but… ”, confides a member of the ecological majority. The Hurmic list includes, it is true, many alter-globalists like Harmonie Lecerf.
Occupation of empty buildings, reopening of public fountains for people living on the streets or in squats… Harmonie Lecerf is not content to receive humanitarian associations or collectives at the town hall, she is demonstrating with them. The mayor, who had made the defense of order a key argument in his election, also appointed this activist as the 9th deputy when she was 4th on his list. But the pressure remains strong. Faced with the operations of the activists of Extinction Rébellion Bordeaux – deflation of the tires of 220 SUVs in the wealthiest districts of Bordeaux, decommissioning of 323 self-service electric scooters… – Pierre Hurmic reacted only very moderately.
Newsletter Politics
Our analyzes and indiscretions on power
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It is a deliberation on a project of a sports and cultural complex planned next to the new stadium of the Olympique Lyonnais that in the Metropolis, the green majority has just cracked. While its new president EELV, Bruno Bernard, called for a vote in favor of this vast private operation – ironically applauded by its initiator, the former mayor Gérard Collomb – part of his majority abstained or was opposed to it. . Rejected en bloc by his allies of the PCF and LFI, the text only passed with the voices of the opposition … A disavowal that borders on the sling. “A warning”, insists one of the environmental slingers… And the warning does not apply only to Lyon.
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