“This is the first time that I am speaking in this assembly and it will also be the last.” His voice full of tears, Tom Pentecost, member of the municipal majority in Saint-Étienne, announced his resignation during of the municipal council of Monday September 30. Without ever mentioning the affair of alleged intimate video blackmailin which the Saint-Etienne mayor is implicated, the young elected official explains having lived during “two years (since the first revelations from Médiapart, editor’s note) a real moral heartbreak, which he put an end to by leaving public life.
“How many times have I not been consistent with what I believe?”
After spending two years supporting, in silence, the mayor indicted in this case for blackmail and criminal conspiracy and embezzlement of public fundshe says ” make a choice that [le] liberates, which painfully heals a wound caused by a moral situation in which [il s’est] found and of which [il se sent] responsible.” Very moved, the 28-year-old former elected official in charge of cleanliness tells the tearing, between loyalty for a man with whom he has worked for 14 years (half his life), to whom he bears “a deep and old affection“, and his conscience. “How many times have I not been consistent with what I believe?“
“I myself am a faggot”
“I should have said that there are words, words that I will never forgive. To say that their violence hit me in my flesh, as an elected official, as a man. Like many, I know the violence of these words and I know the resonance they can have. I know because I’m a fagot myself.” In exchanges revealed by Médiapart in September 2022, we heard Pierre Gauttieri, former chief of staff of the mayor, treat Gilles Artigue as “old pedal on the way back”.
An additional loss for the municipal majority
Tom Pentecost ends his speech with thanks, first to Nicole Peycelonthe former deputy in charge of security who joined the ranks of the opposition in June with eight former members of the majority. Then with thanks to Gaël Perdriau: “Mr. Mayor, you helped build me. This mandate will have been a test for our friendship from which, I fear, it has not recovered.“Without commenting on this new resignation from his team, Gaël Perdriau took the floor again to announce the study of the first point on the agenda.
