The Prime Minister defended his choice to chair the municipal council of Pau, the city of which he is mayor, despite the climate disaster affecting Mayotte.
François Bayrou assumes. For his first speech in front of the deputies, the Prime Minister defended his choice to have gone this Monday, December 16 in the evening to the municipal council of Pau, a city of which he wants to continue to be mayor, despite the current crisis in Mayotte .
If the Béarnais elected official attended a crisis meeting by videoconference on the cyclone which hit the archipelago, the maneuver was decried by both the Pau and national oppositions. And he was criticized again this Tuesday, in the Assembly, during questions to the Prime Minister.
“You shouldn’t have gone to Pau”
“You should not have gone to Pau to keep a mandate, but to the crisis meeting at the Élysée,” said Mathilde Panot, head of the rebellious deputies, in the hemicycle.
“The urgency was not the accumulation of mandates, but the concerns of the French and first of all the Mahorais”, added the president of the group of PS deputies Boris Vallaud, while François Bayrou said he was in favor of the accumulation of mandates. functions of parliamentarians and local elected officials.
“What must the people of Mahor think of a government that looks elsewhere while it suffers?” also asked the elected environmentalist Steevy Gustave.
“Pau is in France”, defended the Prime Minister, arguing that “we do not have the right to separate the province and the circle of powers in Paris”.
“I chaired the municipal council of my town from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. I consider that, in doing so, I was also in my place as a citizen and I intend to defend this idea that citizenship is not does not divide between being in Paris and fulfilling one’s responsibilities as a citizen on the ground,” added the Prime Minister.
Although he only attended by videoconference, the crisis meeting on Mayotte was “fruitful”, he underlined, recalling that the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, had like him followed the discussions remotely from Reunion.
“How to rebuild Mayotte?”
From the National Assembly, François Bayrou took stock of the emergency situation in Mayotte, mentioning “around twenty deaths”, “200 seriously injured” and “1,500 injured who are in relative emergency”. A human toll set to increase.
The Prime Minister indicated that the hospital had regained “some 50% of its activity”. Regarding water, while many residents see their reserves running out, two of the six plants “have been put back into operation”.
“Approximately 50% of the electricity network has been restarted” and “state services consider that we can reach 75% by the end of the week,” added the Prime Minister.
Gérald Darmanin, deputy of the Macronist group and former Minister of Overseas Affairs, challenged him by asking him “how to rebuild Mayotte?”, while housing is devastated on the archipelago. Reconstruction is “an essential question”, agreed François Bayrou, announcing a “call for projects” to quickly rebuild homes.
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