The message could not be clearer: by chairing the municipal council of Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) on Monday evening, François Bayrou indicated his desire to combine his function as mayor with that of Prime Minister. The timing could not have been worse, as the death toll from Cyclone Chido in Mayotte grew longer. And his defense was as clear as it was clumsy: “Pau is in France! », he exclaimed this Tuesday in front of the deputies. “If I had been at the town hall of the 7th arrondissement of Paris or Neuilly, you would have considered it to be very good! »
A practice “from ancient times”
The practice of multiple mandates, long widespread, was opposed by Lionel Jospin, who in 1997 asked all his ministers to leave their local mandates (mayor, president of departmental or regional council, etc.). Then it was limited by a 2014 law, the objective of which was to diversify political personnel, to open mandates to more women, young people and people belonging to minorities.
Emmanuel Macron chose to strengthen the rule of non-cumulation in the name of another conception of politics. In 2015, he announced his refusal to be a deputy or local elected official, rejecting this “cursus honorum from an old time”. President claimed to be “outside the system”, never elected before the Élysée, he had demanded of his Prime Ministers Édouard Philippe and Jean Castex that they hand over their mandates as mayor of Le Havre and Prades.
Barnier leads the way
François Bayrou takes the exact opposite of this posture. Because, according to him, it is one of the causes of the “chasm that has opened up between the province and Paris”, with deputies and ministers above ground, legislating and governing from Paris a country that they know little about. He had also been preceded on this path by Michel Barnier, who had accepted the accumulation for his ministers, and wanted to exhume the notebooks of grievances of the yellow vests, expressions of anger against a president also judged to be above ground.
“We do not have the right to separate the province and the circles of power in Paris,” François Bayrou defended himself this Tuesday, explaining that being Prime Minister in Paris and mayor in Pau was a matter of “citizenship [qui] does not divide.” And from Pau he warned the French – and the president: “I will suggest to future members of my government to keep their mandates and I will suggest to the others a small branch on the ground. » The paradox is that he could, according to a document which circulated this Tuesday in the Assembly, entrust the office of Minister of Territories and Decentralization to François Rebsamen, who has just resigned from the town hall of Dijon after nearly ‘a quarter of a century in office…
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