2023-07-07 19:09:56
Benoit Payan (in the foreground), in Marseille, July 3, 2023. CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP
“We have a duty. That of being worthy and responsible. » The wish of the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan (various left), issued at the opening of the last city council before the summer break, was quickly shattered on Friday July 7. A week after the start of the three evenings of riots which sounded a city which thought it was preserved, the elected officials of Marseilles brutally opposed themselves in a session with heated debates, seeming to lay the foundations for the confrontation of the future municipal elections of 2026 .
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“We hear a speech in dolby stereo between extreme right and extreme right”, slammed the mayor of Marseille to the attention of his opposition. “There are those who condemn the violence and those who do not. Confirm that those who do not will never have a place in your municipal majority., urged him a few minutes earlier the former president of Les Républicains (LR) of the Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolis, Martine Vassal. Renaissance deputy and former LR mayor of the 5th sector, Lionel Royer-Perreaut regretted that “from republican unity, we move on to a kind of political transfer window”, while Senator Reconquest! Stéphane Ravier greeted the “found right-wing intentions of Mrs. Vassal”.
A week earlier, in the same hemicycle, all the group presidents had agreed to postpone most of the scheduled session, at the request of the leader of Printemps Marseille. The mayor wanted to go to the field, after the first of three nights of riots during which several hundred businesses were looted. “Intolerable, unacceptable images, which shocked all Marseillais. (…) Acts that do not pay tribute to Nahel », underlined Benoît Payan at the time of drawing up the balance sheet. The mayor warned “those who would like to instrumentalise” the death of the 17-year-old teenager killed by police fire in Nanterre on June 27. But also the death, under conditions still unclear, of a 27-year-old Marseillais, Sunday July 2, after being hit by a projectile fired by a Flash-Ball.
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tumultuous political debate
On Friday, the council quickly turned into a tumultuous political debate, in line with the tensions which have opposed the majorities of the various Marseille communities for several months. President of the Bouches-du-Rhône departmental council, Martine Vassal lit the first fuse. “The riots, degradations, looting have nothing to do with mourning or emotion. To claim otherwise is to excuse the unforgivable.warned the former LR candidate in 2020. Posing in defense of the “Silent France which works hard, which does not demonstrate, this France which does not steal, does not loot”Ms. Vassal targeted the “”rebellious”, vain, who do not call for calm”.
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