Guillaume Richard is a Horizons municipal councilor in Nantes.
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LE FIGARO. - In an interview with
Ouest France
, Johanna Rolland said she looked back on ten years of mandate which made the city “more ecological, more feminist, more creative”.
Nantes would also be “a city that cares and protects”.
How do you view these statements?
How has the city evolved in ten years?
William RICHARD. -
Albert Camus said that
“by misnaming things, we add to the misfortunes of the world”
.
This article in the newspaper
Ouest France
shows Johanna Rolland's inability to make the right diagnosis of the city's situation.
Some policies have been a success, as is the case for Citad'elles - a reception center for victims of domestic violence.
Johanna Rolland also presents this project as the success of her mandate in the interview given to
Ouest France
.
For the rest, all major projects have failed, whether the Yellow Park or the Heron Tree, projects inherited from Jean-Marc Ayrault.
But above all, the black point of his mandates remains insecurity.
In 2014, I defended - as an elected official - the structuring of law enforcement, also asserting that it was necessary to quickly install surveillance cameras which we only had very recently.
The goal: to prepare for the evolution of our city and propose a long-term vision because the city was becoming more dense and growing.
We had to be able to ensure the safety of residents.
It wasn't done.
To assert that the city has become
“more feminist”
seems very peremptory to me.
The first freedom is equality in the right to move, come and go.
When the former prefect of Nantes announced, a few years ago, that it was not reasonable to circulate in the streets of the city after 9 p.m., it is difficult to speak of a success in this area.
We cannot talk about gender equality when women cannot go out into the street, at the risk of being attacked.
All this is only the consequence of a political alliance started in 2014 with the far left and continued in 2020 with Nupes.
Johanna Rolland wanted to join Nupes because she could not be elected otherwise.
The mayor was not up to the challenges of the city of Nantes.
Like Anne Hidalgo, Johanna Rolland inherited a crown that was far too big for her.
And the interview - a double page - in
Ouest France
is nothing less than a justification;
However, if we can explain it, it is because the results are not good.
The city has been the scene of many news events in recent years. At the beginning of January, a woman was raped in front of the castle of the Dukes of Brittany. Has insecurity gained ground in Nantes? How to explain it?
Insecurity has gained ground, affecting women and the most vulnerable.
There was - between 2017 and 2021 - an explosion of insecurity, manifested by the increase in violence against women.
This is explained by the massive arrival of migrants, as recognized by the security deputy at the time, Pascal Bolo.
We have thus left people to fend for themselves, producing rapes and attacks, because these populations who arrived en masse were not properly welcomed.
Then, we cannot act with authority when we run the city with those who claim that
“the police kill”
.
We cannot exercise authority and want to fight against insecurity if the behavior of elected officials is the opposite of the authority required in a city like Nantes.
Also read “What is happening in other big cities has caught up with us”: diving into the heart of downtown Nantes, undermined by insecurity
From now on, we can only note the demographic explosion of the city in the face of an overwhelmed town hall.
And installing cameras is necessary, but too late to curb the city's security crisis...
Has the situation of women improved in Nantes? Can we, in this case, speak of a “feminist” city?
We can talk about gender equality in the public service in terms of salaries;
Nantes Métropole is committed to combating salary inequalities - five years late compared to all other major metropolises.
There have been many improvements, but this equality on a daily basis does not mean much if you cannot travel in complete safety.
All the efforts made to have fine speeches betray the reality: women are being attacked in the streets.
Fortunately, the government sent reinforcements allowing for a greater police presence in the streets of Nantes, improving things, without however achieving an optimal situation.
Nantes was ranked among the favorite cities of the French in the 2010s. According to the latest ranking established by
Ouest France
, in March 2023, Nantes was in 55th position...
This classification shows that Johanna Rolland is disconnected from her territory;
the mayor is responsible for this downgrading.
Conversely, we are responsible for what our city still is: a beautiful city.
If it attracts less due to the policy pursued which allowed insecurity to explode, it remains the largest metropolis in the West, which has always been able to show that it can recover.
To say in Nantes that there is a real problem of insecurity and that the migration problem has been particularly poorly managed is not to be extremist, it is to name things.
William Richard
Nantes remains a wonderful city with tremendous potential, provided that we offer it a new structure;
we must work for a long-term vision.
Nantes needs a new impetus to redefine local needs and this must be done without political extremes.
What about the city's environmental policy?
We left the most strategic and important subject to Nupes: ecology.
I believe, for my part, that Nantes must become the spearhead of blue ecology, that of the sea, the strategic issue of tomorrow, especially for the large metropolises of the West.
Unfortunately, in Nantes, the subjects of ecology and sustainable development were left to the far left which advocates degrowth and opposes nuclear power, far from a long-term policy.
The cycling plan could have been interesting.
In other cities - like Lyon - the bicycle plan has always been built according to other means of transport to structure and reflect the organization of the city.
In Nantes, everything was organized for bicycles, without thinking about buses and cars.
And this negative and punitive ecology constantly pits people against each other rather than posing ecology as a subject of the future that generates consensus.
As for Place du Commerce, Johanna Rolland wants to make it greener after having completely concreted it, creating heat islands... There is a blatant lack of coherence there and dangerous for our territory.
I also believe that on a metropolitan scale, we must, like Christelle Morançais, president of the Pays de la Loire region, work for the future of our energy independence: nuclear power is not a dirty word, it is the future of France.
And against the backdrop of the crisis in Ukraine, our country has managed to cope with the explosion in energy costs, thanks to its nuclear production capacity.
In December, strongly attacked by her opponents and certain media, Johanna Rolland defended herself as follows:
“The noise creates the breeding ground for the extreme right”
.
What do you respond to this argument?
This argument is the weapon of those who do not succeed and who need to justify themselves.
Town halls like Montpellier or Clermont-Ferrand - socialist - did not need to threaten their opponents with extremism.
It is easy to talk about
“the far right”
to hide its failures.
With Johanna Rolland, we will end up believing that being far-right means not agreeing with the socialists.
Now, it seems to me that we need to be more nuanced;
being far-right is more about adopting an unmeasured, populist, radical, immediate discourse... Telling Nantes that there is a real problem of insecurity and that the migration problem has been particularly poorly managed, this is not It's not being extremist, it's naming things.
For my part, I name things.
It is by doing this that we work and prepare for the future, far from immediate political reactions.
See far to do well, as Édouard Philippe rightly says.