« So what. » Despite diabetes and fatigue due to heart disease, Jean-Paul Virapoullé has retained his taste for scathing formulas. In his vast Creole house in Saint-André, in the east of Reunion Island, surrounded by Indian furniture in dark wood, which recalls the Malabar coast, where his ancestors came from, the octogenarian, tutelary figure of the right local, scolds the new generation of Reunionese politicians.
The former centrist parliamentarian, political heir to Prime Minister Michel Debré (1912-1996), who was also a member of Parliament for Réunion between 1963 and 1988, is saddened when reading the region's budgetary guidelines for 2025. “There are no more major projects”he asserts. His opponent, Huguette Bello, 74 years old, current president (various left) of the community? “An empty container. » Didier Robert, 60, who should have taken over the leadership of the right pay (the local right, in Creole)? “He ruined everything. He's not a leader. »
The legacy of those who carried Reunion in the wake of the departmentalization of 1946 is, obviously, not easy to assume. Whether, on the right, it is Michel Debré, father of the Ve Republic and faithful minister of General de Gaulle; of Jean-Paul Virapoullé, who had refused to vote for the censure of Michel Rocard, despite the instructions of the UDF, and who was the author, in 2003, of the amendment which fixed the status of the island in the Republic; or Pierre Lagougue (1921-1998), elected official who gave his name to several high schools on the island. But also, on the left, of Paul Vergès (1925-2016), the powerful and authoritarian boss of a long-autonomous Reunion Communist Party (PCR), always a reference.
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