2023-05-24 06:00:35
Lhe recent resignation of Yannick Morez, mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins (Loire-Atlantique), following death threats and the arson of his home, is far from being an isolated case. The figures are overwhelming: between 2021 and 2022, incivility and attacks on elected officials jumped from 1,720 to 2,265 (around 32%, according to the Ministry of the Interior). Since the last municipal elections in 2020, at least 4,000 elected officials, including 1,293 mayors, have resigned from office, according to the Association of Mayors of France.
This is the extreme symptom of the malaise, still largely taboo, which reigns among local elected officials and of the deep disintegration of the bond of trust with citizens. Intimidation, cyberbullying, violence: so many acts that have unfortunately become frequent, against elected officials or those around them, to dissuade them from exercising their mandate, applying the law or carrying out solidarity actions as in Saint- Brevin-les-Pins.
Sad reality of a sick democracy which accepts that its first representatives are considered as outlets for its ills; of a Republic which refuses to see that, by forgetting those who make it live on a daily basis, it damages itself and forgets itself.
Local elected officials are caught in a vice: on the one hand, the incessant contradictory injunctions of the State, budget cuts without compensation, loss of financial autonomy and free administration of communities, normative inflation, administrative millefeuille, that hinder projects more than they unlock their potential; on the other, citizens confronted with an increasingly difficult daily life, in a society threatened by growing social inequalities and precariousness, global warming and war even in Europe.
Democratic appeasement
The ingratitude of the exercise of responsibilities, which is neither rewarded nor remunerated at the fair value of the commitment, ultimately leads to the feeling of powerlessness, abandonment and discouragement.
And it is not the consultations, artificial and vertical, carried out from the top of the state that reassure them. In reality, for six years, and although regularly courted, local elected officials feel very alone. In 2018, to whom did Emmanuel Macron turn to try to respond to the exasperation expressed by the “yellow vests”? Local elected officials! In 2020, who did he turn to to find concrete solutions to the pandemic? Local elected officials! Today, to whom does he turn to try to make people forget the calamitous sequence of retreats and restore some semblance of breath to his five-year term? Local elected officials! Many speeches by the President of the Republic praise the mayors, the territories and their elected officials. But there is no love, there are only proofs of love.
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