2023-11-25 23:37:32
Without Gérard Collomb, who died this Saturday, November 25 at the age of 76, political life would not have been the same. Because he is the elected official who propelled Emmanuel Macron to the forefront. The person concerned never forgot it. As evidenced by these words, spoken at the Élysée on March 8, 2022. “You were a great architect of what was my victory. I know, dear Gérard, everything I owe you. » That day, the head of state took all his time to decorate the former mayor of Lyon and have a one-on-one dinner with him. “Gégé”, as the Macron couple calls him, does not hide his emotion well. The head of state wanted to dedicate this almost timeless ceremony to him, while the war in Ukraine has just broken out and the president has returned to campaign for his re-election.
However, nothing predestined Gérard Collomb, born June 20, 1947, to experience this destiny as kingmaker. He was born into a modest family: his mother was a housekeeper, his father, a metalworker and CGT trade unionist. Gérard is a serious student, who knows how to rise thanks to his studies. Khâgne at the Lycée du Parc, in Lyon (Rhône), then aggregation of classics, which will seal his love of Greek and Latin.
He owes his first steps in politics to the ideas of François Mitterrand. He joined its Convention of Republican Institutions, then participated in the refounding of the Socialist Party. In 1977, at the age of 30, Gérard Collomb became a municipal councilor in Lyon. It was the start of a career ticking all the boxes: six years deputy, seventeen years senator. He won the town hall of the 9th arrondissement of Lyon in 1995 then the central town hall in 2001. Here he is, successor to Raymond Barre, who did not stand for re-election.
Un influent baron local
The new strongman transforms the city. A self-confessed cumulator, he only holds his position in the Senate when issues relate to his city. Which will earn him a financial sanction from the upper house. He doesn’t miss the national exposure. In the PS, it is a local baron ranked on the right wing who makes and breaks internal majorities. The senator-mayor supports Ségolène Royal, then Dominique Strauss-Kahn, finally François Hollande. In 2015, he fell in love with the young Emmanuel Macron, who had just arrived at Bercy. He invites her to the summer school of his movement, the Reformers. Then from 2016, he put his networks of elected officials, advisors and entrepreneurs at the service of the ambitions of the former deputy secretary general of the Élysée.
“Someone like Emmanuel Macron is shattering the landscape,” he insisted on May 18, 2016, in front of Jean-Jacques Bourdin. According to him, it is “obvious” that the Minister of the Economy will be a candidate if François Hollande does not rise in the polls. Thunderclap to the left. The baron mentions out loud a hypothesis hitherto taboo at the PS… The thirty-year-old, with this support from Lyon, then sets off to attack the Élysée.
Lyon, September 24, 2016. Emmanuel Macron and Gérard Collomb, then mayor of Lyon. Two months later, the Minister of the Economy declared himself a presidential candidate. AFP/Jean-Philippe Ksiazek
On the day of his foal’s inauguration, Collomb cannot suppress tears of joy in the presidential party room. Emmanuel Macron quickly asked him to become Minister of the Interior. The Lyonnais asks for 48 hours to think. In his entire career, he never sought to become a minister. Collective discipline is not his cup of tea. He prefers the role of local wren. But at 69, he finally accepted and left his chair in Lyon, with death in his soul, in the name of non-cumulation.
Resignation and Lyon defeat
Place Beauvau, he passed an anti-terrorism law, which enshrined state of emergency measures in common law, and the asylum and immigration law, intended to reduce the time it takes to examine asylum applications. In his post, he had to deal with the attack at Saint-Charles station and the terrorist attacks in Carcassonne and Trèbes. At the ministry, Collomb becomes disillusioned. He hardly gets along with the head of government, Édouard Philippe, has to scrap with the left wing of the macronie, and fears seeing his ex-deputies steal away his influence in Lyon.
On October 2, 2018, he confirmed his resignation, in an interview with Figaro, in which he announces his return to the Lyon scene. Édouard Philippe learned of it in the middle of a question session with the government, through an alert on his cell phone. An eagerness that will have served no purpose. Faced with dissidence and worn out by his time in the executive, Gérard Collomb failed to save either his town hall or the metropolis during the 2020 elections.
Disappointed but not defeated, for a long time at odds with Emmanuel Macron, he remained advisor to the metropolis of Lyon until the end. On September 16, 2022, he announced that he had stomach cancer. In a message, he promised: “I will fight against the disease with the same energy that I had put into the service of Lyon. » His last fight.
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