His passage will certainly have marked Reunion Island. And Reunion will certainly have marked his memory. Jérôme Filippini changes prefecture in a few days. Before his departure, he chose the Mountain for the program Dimanche Ansanm. A balcony with a view of Saint-Denis. Ideal to symbolize one’s attachment to the heights of our island.
If Jérôme Filippini has served for the last two years as Prefect of Reunion Island, he has already come to the island as part of a mission in 2015, for two days. “I had gone up the rue de Paris to the Jardin de l’état, I had a somewhat distant knowledge. Even if members of my family had lived there, a very long time ago. I had this vision of the ramparts, of Mafate where we reached on foot and I really liked that.”
He walked the island’s trails several times, which brought him a lot: “When we do a public service job, we receive people, we have to work on files, do law… And we work in a territory. Knowing a territory is very important, I did it in my previous posts. But when you arrive at Reunion, if you haven’t walked the trails, you haven’t understood Reunion. In any case, that’s my experience.
He also left his mark on the Reunion Islanders with his participation in the island’s highlights such as dancing the maloya, the dance of the dragons: “To do the job of Prefect you have to have curiosity and sympathy for people otherwise you don’t do the job well. I’m spontaneous, I didn’t calculate all that, I did my job only I didn’t try to make myself sympathetic so much the better it happened, but it was me and it turns out that what created the buzz was that the media talked about it, there in my public role it was seen more , I was very happy. The only thing I didn’t do was walk on the fire and it’s a good thing I left quickly.”
The significant event he remembers in Reunion: “the cyclone was a complicated and stressful ordeal, I had never lived in a tropical zone, it remains the most significant event “.
As for its places of refuge? “Grand-Bassin au Tampon, where I have been several times, the Bras de la Plaine in general, the 5 corners of the island but it is the heights and the wild east and the lava coast that I I liked the most Images that will remain engraved, I will not forget the Reunion, it is there dann ker”
Il “hope to come back, I will do something wonderful, spend the holidays in Reunion without being the Prefect, that would be a real joy“.
