Villejuif, won by an improbable team combining environmentalists and LR in 2014, was taken over by the PCF allied with the PS, EELV, LFI, Génération.S. A consolation for the Communists, which remains symbolic compared to the four lost bastions including the emblematic Champigny-sur-Marne, city where is elected the president of the Departmental Council Christian Favier and where long resided the former national secretary of the party, Georges Marchais . The score of 54% made by Laurent Jeanne (Free supported by LR, Modem and UDI), is final. Already in 2014, the mayors of Choisy-le-Roi and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges had been elected by a few votes, but the mayor of Valenton, Françoise Baud, had largely beaten Metin Yavuz who was running for the first time.
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While the canton of Limeil-Valenton-fraction of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges has already passed to the right, it is now that of Choisy- another fraction of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges as well as the two of Champigny-sur-Marne which could rock well during the next departmental elections (currently scheduled for March 2021), or 3 cantons. However in 2015, the left gained 14 cantons against 11 for the right. Without these 3 cantons, the score would be exactly reversed.
Read: The left retains the Val de Marne
It remains to be seen how the majority will choose, the fruit of a union between an LR candidate, Tonino Panetta, and the ecologist Ali Id El Ouali. Enough to recall the history of Villejuif in 2014, when four first-round candidates (2 from the right, 2 from the left) joined forces to elect Franck Le Bohellec against the outgoing communist mayor Claudine Cordillot. The mayonnaise had not taken long and in 2015, it was Pierre Garzon and Flore Munck who were elected departmental councilors of the canton of Villejuif. But the context is different. Impossible therefore to make predictions.
A difficult union with LFI and EELV
If the birth of LREM decapitated the PS and knocked out LR in 2017, LFI for its part contributed to the collapse of the PCF, during the legislative elections, Europeans, then municipal elections. Part of the rebels participated in local unions of the left but others were located outside, which was the case in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges as in Choisy-le-Roi, where even in the second round, the union was not possible. Ditto for environmentalists who led a number of alliances against outgoing elected PCF in the first round, without necessarily meeting in the second round. In Choisy, EELV 94 did not follow Ali Id El Ouali in its alliance with the candidate LR but also did not give its logo to the outgoing communist mayor. At issue, different visions on ecological and governance issues.
In the end, the PCF, which had lost only 2 cities in 2014, going from 12 to 10 municipalities out of 47, now drops to 7. The party retains, however, some emblematic and rapidly changing cities like Vitry-sur -Seine, first city in terms of population or Ivry-sur-Seine and Gentilly at the gates of Paris. In these municipalities, the outgoing mayors were re-elected in the second round but without any difficulty. And in Chevilly-Larue, Bonneuil-sur-Marne and Fontenay-sous-Bois, it was from the first round that the councilors were renewed.
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