From our special correspondent in Marseille
Place des Réformés, at the top of the Canebière, fifteen minutes walk from the Old Port, the mayor of the first sector of Marseille, Sophie Camard, listens to the boss of the Danaïdes, a restaurant whose large terrace is brightened up by the flower market neighbour.
Alain Boubatra is "
circumspect and stunned
".
He searches for his words, refusing to fall into the only register of anger.
“In anger, we pass for imbeciles of Marseillais.
But they should be wary up there, in Paris, because we are the owners of restaurants and bars, we are far from being idiots and above all, we do our research.
We can clearly see that we are facing amateurs, and that we are victims of a deep injustice ... "
For him, it is obvious,
" there is not only the virus, there is other thing down there. "
He is convinced, above all, that there will ultimately be
"more deaths from companies than from the virus"
.
Read also: Coronavirus: in Marseille, is the situation really worse than in other large metropolises?
Like Sophie Camard - who spent part of the day on Saturday meeting the profession - he anticipates that the closure obligation will be generally respected.
“There were protests and demonstrations on
Friday, but many have lost part of their turnover this year in Marseille,”
says the boss of the Danaïdes.
S
urtout in neighborhoods that are not tourist.
They are also not going to take the risk of paying fines or taking an administrative shutdown on their heads ...
"
The municipal police in withdrawal
The mayor of the sector specifies that the municipal police of Marseille - carried away last spring by the ecologist Michèle Rubirola at the head of a union list of the left -
"will not participate or will in any way help the national police in this mission ... ”
A desire that is also firmly supported by Deputy Samia Ghali.
Like her but with other words, Sophie Camard does not hide her "
anger
" at the decisions of the national executive, in particular at the action of Minister Olivier Véran, who came there on Friday to try to defuse the crisis.
"We bend over backwards to ensure that the health instructions are respected, we are one of the cities where there are the most tests, we have distributed masses of masks which are now worn and now all our teaching is put in difficulty by too brutal choices, posed without any composure.
It's a piecemeal crisis management! ”
Camard, ecologist and rebellious, fears the consequences in the short and long term, "
while the rate of mistrust of politics and science is already so high
".
Faced with the local growth figures of the epidemic, the too large number of occupied beds in the metropolis, the Marseille executive but also the LR elected officials of the department and the Paca region answer that it is the tourists, this summer, who have brought the virus, spread it, and that things will be back to normal with the fall and respect for barrier gestures.
And above all that they are not responsible for the state considered catastrophic of the public hospital, and therefore the limitation of its means of reception.
Within the new Marseille opposition, however, we point to
"the cinema sessions organized in the open air this summer on the beaches by the town hall, with hundreds of people gathered throughout the evening, the parties without ceasing, more than light controls of restaurant terraces where the spaces had been doubled to respect the distances but where the restaurant owners preferred to double the covers ... "
There was no dialogue, no consultation.
Nothing.
Olivia Fortin, administrative assistant
On a trendy terrace overlooking the Old Port where consumers enjoy the off-season lying on deckchairs, Olivia Fortin, administrative assistant, prefers to praise the good sanitary practices put in place to some 14,000 agents of the city.
It underlines the necessary rigor
“for the employees, their relatives and the continuity of the City's public service.
We are faced with the unknown and the precautionary principle prevails ”
.
But the elected representative, from civil society, is not very worried about the Covid.
“Those who are in intensive care today were infected a while ago.
The cases are decreasing,
”she assures us.
Olivia Fortin is more worried
"for small restaurateurs, employees, divers, local producers that we had put in confidence in the new municipality and who find themselves with their crates of squash on their arms ..."
She is sorry :
“The executive was satisfied with a few indicators, without having a global view.
There was no dialogue, no consultation.
Nothing.
And this Prime Minister Jean Castex who prided himself on his status as former mayor to extol the dialogue with elected officials ... It is unbearable.
Together, we could have built something smarter ... "
Together, but without being fooled by the
“political postures”
of each other.
Departmental and regional are in six months now.
The municipal majority considers that the LR president of the Region, Renaud Muselier, is already in the campaign.
To hear them, he wants to appear as a local peace officer to catering professionals in Marseille and to the executive;
with the hope of not having an LREM candidate facing him.
On the other hand, at LR, we know that the first deputy, the socialist Benoît Payan, would like to take the department.
All media space is open to him while the mayor Michèle Rubirola is still recovering from a surgical operation ...
Raoult, "it is our God"
These divisions, however, are stifled by the phenomenon Didier Raoult, the famous director of the IHU Mediterranean.
Further in the city, in the district of La Plaine, a Marseille institution, Le petit Nice, welcomed consumers on Saturday for a final evening.
The boss, former boxing champion Richard Caramanolis, has no plans to resist.
“
Unless
,” he said, “
if Professor Raoult tells us all not to close
”.
Here, it is a nerve center of pro-Raoults, opponents being also quite rare in Marseille.
This year he claims to have lost 50% of his turnover between the closures linked to the virus and the works which paralyze the district ... This closure has "
no meaning
".
"
It's rubbish, we do not understand anything ... The young people will go buy beers from the grocers and from the vegetable shops and they will come and sit in front of the bar or cram into their 30M2.
It won't change anything ...
"His hope now,"
like that of all Marseillais, is the teacher.
We hope he will defend us
, he said.
He is our God, he is prayed for by believers of all religions and by all political parties!
Have you ever seen someone capable of this?
He can do anything.
"