“Marseille is beautiful, but that's it! »Jérôme, a 40-year-old craftsman, translates in a few words the“ I love you either ”that more and more Marseillais nurture with regard to their city. An enticing showcase, with a postcard Old Port and new very sore Docks, but a darker back shop, with unemployment higher than the national average… "Comment Gaudin (Editor's note: mayor LR since 1995) and his own can they still appear before us? "Sighs Jerome.
Two months before the municipal elections, the LR lists are at the top of the polls. Martine Vassal, "baby Gaudin" and figurehead of the Republicans in Marseille, highlights her twenty years of political practice, from the city to the department and since September 2018, at the head of the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis.
"I am loyal but I am not an heiress," she says. My singularity is to know all the levels of local institutions whose action has an impact on the daily life of Marseillais. "But to add immediately:" There will be, for sure, a before and after the rue d'Aubagne ". And Vassal is afraid of being, of all the candidates for mayor, the one who, for many voters, bears a heavy responsibility in this drama: the collapse of two dilapidated buildings, in the city center, which had killed eight people November 5, 2018.
"Jean-Claude Gaudin has totally abandoned us"
This 57-year-old young grandmother knows that her task will be tough. The National Rally, according to several unofficial polls, the heel, even ahead ... And then there is Bruno Gilles, the senator and dissident candidate of his own political family, who has not given up. "I continue to reach out to him," insists Martine Vassal, who warns: "Faced with the FN, because I refute the name of RN, everyone must take responsibility. "
A call to the "republican front" - that is to say to an "everything except the RN" - which could prove essential in the second round. In the working-class districts of northern Marseille, the RN has gradually replaced the left. "Jean-Claude Gaudin has totally abandoned us," sighs Gérard. This 67-year-old EDF retiree meets regularly with a few seniors in the neighborhood in a small room in the town hall. Last Friday, there were around forty of them with a galette des rois and… Stéphane Ravier, senator, former mayor of the sector and candidate for the Lepéniste party in Marseille.
“It is a heap of small problems never solved which push us to vote RN, explains Sylviane, 78 years old. Sidewalks that are not repaired, garbage that is no longer collected. "We have shown our effectiveness at the district level," says Ravier, who cites the dismantling of two Roma camps and the closure of an underground mosque ... "Both the right and the left acted as if the surge of Islam did not exist, he insists. They pay the price. "
A weakened left
Yvon Berland also hopes to take advantage of this “clearance”. The Republic on the March of which he is at the top of the list, came in second position in the Europeans, behind the RN ... Doctor and academic with well-tempered socialist ideas, Berland will however have a difficulty: responding to the wishes of his electoral base which for a year has considerably "legalized." "For me, the LREM list is an additional list on the left," says Martine Vassal.
The left is weakened by an inflationary and fragmented political offer. Nothing more misleading, indeed, than this union that wants to embody the list of Printemps Marseillais, worn on the baptismal font, last Friday. If this list has received the anointing of Jean-Luc Mélenchon leader of rebellious France and deputy of Marseille, the PS and the PCF, it is also and above all the reflection of a dangerous dispersion. She did not prevent Samia Ghali, the very popular senator, ex-socialist, now "unlabeled", from leaving on her side. As for the Greens, no question of not riding the wave that carries them from the Europeans.
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“We feel that the ecological concern is gaining ground, rejoices Sébastien Barles, the standard bearer of EELV. From young creative people in the city center, it extends to households in lower-income neighborhoods. The challenge is to get the abstainers back to the polls and beat the RN. "The game has never been so complex," admits a local official. This will end in a default win to beat the RN. But from whom? And if there is a republican front… ”
These "shopkeeper agreements" make Stéphane Ravier smile. "It is the establishment of a gaudino-socialo-Macron system which will only result in encouraging voters to vote for us ..."
To read in our file on municipal
> LREM's cuckoo strategy
> Emmanuel Macron behind, Edouard Philippe at the front
> Jérôme Fourquet: "The national climate can handicap En Marche"
> The Republicans, winning to survive
> RN wants to strengthen its strongholds
> The Greens already see themselves there after the success of the Europeans
> For the PS, keep the keys to Paris, Lille, Rennes…
> Bordeaux: a funny campaign in the absence of Alain Juppé
> Lyon: the endless fight of Gérard Collomb
> Biarritz: the duel of ministers embarrasses the executive
