2023-06-24 09:23:30
Between them, everything started around a blanquette of veal at the Elysée. In any case, it is the glossy story that is told of the “Marseille en grand” plan, the beginnings of which took shape during this dinner, in March 2021, between Emmanuel Macron and Benoît Payan. The sauce takes between these two quarantine, born a month apart. And at the end of the summer, the mayor of Marseille warmly welcomes the President of the Republic on his arrival at the Old Port, on the first day of a three-day trip in an unprecedented format. “The State and the City, hand in hand, to give themselves the means to make Marseille the great capital of the South”, he tweets by way of welcome.
“The president sincerely loves Marseille, everything is said in his video for the 30th anniversary of the coronation of OM, this club made him vibrate”, slips Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, close to the presidential couple and Renaissance deputy for Bouches-du. -Rhône, while Emmanuel Macron is preparing this Monday to launch act two of the Marseille plan in a big way, again during a long visit. “I found in the Head of State a reliable partner who loved this city”, also underlined Benoît Payan Wednesday in front of the press, welcoming the presidential work “out of the ordinary in Marseille”.
But the context has changed a lot since the first visit and the banns officially published in the Pharo gardens. At the podium, this September 2, 2021, Emmanuel Macron calls for an end to the “Chicayas” in front of an audience of local elected officials, many of whom Republicans have not yet joined the presidential party. We are less than eight months from the presidential election. For his part, Benoît Payan is the only one to speak before Emmanuel Macron. He is in his recent clothes as mayor, after the resignation of Michèle Rubirola. State funding is vital for him to carry out the urgent project of renovating schools, but also the files of transport, security or even unsanitary housing.
“The honeymoon will eventually end”
Two years have passed since those weddings. Emmanuel Macron kept his promise to commit the financial means and to return. But if Marseille remains the common child to be cherished, the Macron-Payan “couple” has rather gone into status mode “it’s complicated”. “The honeymoon will eventually end” even likes to say Bruno Gilles, who finally joined the Marseille right-wing opposition group, after his dissident candidacy against Martine Vassal in the last municipal elections. “The Busserine gymnasium is a real affront, it is not something that can be minimized”, he continues, echoing the “arm-wrestling” reported on Saturday by Le Figaro : the delegation, who had come to do some scouting before the presidential visit, was indeed refused access by the caretaker to this municipal gymnasium in the northern districts.
“The time for the elections will come and involving the President of the Republic in this is not very glorious”, declared Benoît Payan the same day, in an interview with the regional daily. Provence, before adding: “Put him in a battle of political politics, it is really to damage his approach which is not an approach of interest. “Except that the hiccup comes from its teams, a priori from the sports management. Quack that he has since brushed aside, and on which the city did not respond to our interview requests.
This Friday morning on BFM Marseille, Benoît Payan prefers to insist on what holds the alloy together: “I do not share a certain number of subjects with Emmanuel Macron. I am not in his majority, I do not agree with his thinking, however I must recognize that in Marseille, there is something strong that unites us, and that it is a subject on which not only did he keep his word but on which he kept strong commitments, and that’s what interests me. »
“Everyone criticizes but wants his sequence”
The fact remains that a prefect and a presidential chief of staff have to turn back, the image is not common. At the municipal mid-term, the local right did not hesitate to comment on it ardently. “It’s a political fault”, retorts Lionel Royer-Perreaut, deputy (ex-LR rallied to Renaissance) and leader of the opposition of the Marseille right. “I do not understand this posture of Benoît Payan. He does not keep his nerves. If only it was the first time, but we have already seen it done with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Housing, Gérard Darmanin…. In general, everyone criticizes the president, few support him, but everyone wants his sequence. »
Did this episode cost a head to head between Emmanuel Macron and Benoît Payan? It is hard to imagine that such a meeting is not on the program, but the Elysée leaves room for doubt until the end, not confirming, Thursday evening, such an interview. The presidential palace says that the relationship with Marseille “is good in the sense that we have a common interest”, which is “to change the daily life of the people of Marseille. “. But the Elysée recalls in passing that the success of the first concrete translations of the Greater Marseille plan is a “shared success”… in the sense that “it is the President of the Republic who has clearly given impetus to this plan. We let the main witnesses appreciate.
The in-between turns, a turning point for the couple
According to Bruno Gilles, the “turning point” in relations between Emmanuel Macron and Benoît Payan dates well before the participation of the mayor of Marseille in the demonstrations against the pension reform. “In between the two rounds, in April 2022, when candidate Macron comes for his meeting in Marseille, Benoît Payan does not even give a Republican welcome, that marked the president, he assures. I’m not saying you needed the fanfare, but the Pharo is big enough all the same to find a sofa corner and offer a coffee, especially the office of Samia Ghali, the first assistant, who has the most beautiful view of Marseille … Gaudin received a lot of left-wing ministers, without anyone knowing! »
Still, Benoît Payan now faces an invigorated opposition. Who negotiates presidential sequences on his land, such as that on degraded condominiums which will take place not in the northern districts, but in the constituency of Lionel Royer-Perreaut. Who does not hesitate to deal blows and to recall “the fragility” of the municipal majority, with in particular the recent resignation of the town planning assistant Mathilde Chaboche. Who does not intend, either, to be dispossessed of the results of the Marseille plan on a large scale, like Emmanuel Macron conceiving Marseille as a laboratory land. And if, basically, the waltz of feelings between the two instigators of this plan did not say anything else: the impossibility of doing things between them, alone, with no other parameters than their couple. Another kind of declination of “neither with you nor without you”.
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