“What time do I sing?“, asks Benoît Payan. “Always not !“, respond the others, laughing. It has become the gimmick of the Copil meetings. Organized for almost a year at the Marseille City Hall, these sessions bringing together the mayor, his cabinet and the main municipal management held every month, then every week, then twice a week, then daily With an objective that is a mission impossible: planning down to the smallest detail what Benoît Payan describes as “.the most complex event ever organized in Marseille“.
The arrival of the Olympic flame is indeed a ceremony unprecedented in its scale, “invented“by a mayor whose modest ambition is to”place Marseille at the center of the world“.
For worse or better, this will be the case today, Tuesday May 8, when Belem enters the harbor, which will be followed by a billion spectators. 150,000 will attend “live” in the Old Port, including the President of the Republic.
6,000 police officers and gendarmes on duty (half of the mobile force units available in France!), to ensure land, water and underwater security, but also air security with a Rafale and an Awacs flying over the Marseille sky.
Tuesday morning, for the ten members of the steering committee, it was the “der des ders”, the final dress rehearsal before the big marathon, in order to “ensure that all unforeseen events have been planned for” summed up the brand new cabinet director Marie-Emmanuelle Assidon, who wasn’t joking that much. The new dircab has seen others: she worked at the Cazeneuve cabinet in 2015, at the time of the terrorist attacks… elsewhere, his instructions were firm: “In case of any major shit, you ring me!“. And to avoid being stunned, you have to plan everything. Absolutely everything.
“And we are forever the first!”
From the installation of kilometers of barriers, to the streets “bleached” – meaning getting rid of poorly parked cars -, passing through the “sewer security“, the marking of the breakdowns for the fireworks, the first note of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony which will resonate at 6:04 p.m. at the Pharo, and the “surprise at 7:28 p.m.” which will follow (and of which, despite our pleas, no one will say a word) “Did the guests understand that at 8 p.m., they will have to clear out so that the stage configuration can be changed for the concert? Nobody will have a seizure?“, assures Marie-Emmanuelle Assidon. “Are we sure that smoke bombs will not be detrimental to maritime visibility?“.”Is the Minister of Culture finally coming?” More complicated : “Let’s think about the unforeseen events with the PR (President of the Republic, Editor’s note), I don’t know what, but there will be some“.
Behind each trick question, there are weeks of work for City agents. Tuesday, like a sports coach before a world championship, the mayor came to encourage the teams mobilized at the municipal command post (PCC): “You show that Marseille is capable of hosting global events, not just parties and glitter, but meaningful ones. The Pope is every five centuries, the flame is a first. And we are forever the first!“
In all, more than a thousand municipal agents will be on deck during these two days. A hundred will see nothing of the show. Locked within the four walls of the command room, representatives from each department will collect information from the field in real time and implement any last-minute decisions.
Municipal police, firefighters of course, but also parks and gardens, sports department, sector town halls, lawyers, IT specialists (in the event of a cyber attack): it is an administration in miniature that has been brought together, “in order to be able to adapt quickly to all unforeseen events.” Even if it means “knowing how to pass off unforeseen events as surprises“, smiles an official.
At the Town Hall, rest rooms, and even a nap room, have been set up. But Benoît Payan will not have the leisure to take a nap there. And not just because of the protocol. Today, there is no need to sing Claude François to meet your audience. It’s very simple: Benoît Payan superstar will burst the screen of all the TVs and saturate the airwaves of all the radios urbi et orbi. Hundreds of cameras, dozens of interviews, live streams and duplexes await him in the four corners of the Old Port. Everything is set up. Well almost. Yesterday, the mayor had one more little question for his office: “Thursday evening, will I be able to watch the match somewhere, a little quiet?“
