Maryse Joissains-Masini will be a good candidate in Aix-en-Provence. The mayor LR obtained on Wednesday the annulment of his sentence of one year of ineligibility and six months in prison suspended, and will therefore be able to appear at the municipal elections in March.
The Court of Cassation did not quash the guilty decision pronounced against the elected official, condemned in May by the Montpellier Court of Appeal for embezzlement and illegal taking of interests, but quashed the decision “in its sole provisions relating to penalties ”. The highest court in the judicial system therefore refers Maryse Joissains to the Montpellier Court of Appeal, otherwise composed, for a new trial.
Candidate for a fourth term
In its judgment, the Court considered that the Court of Appeal had erred in law in pronouncing the penalty of ineligibility of the elected representative “on the ground that it was compulsory on the basis of article 131-26-2 of the Criminal Code ".
However, “at the date of the facts […], this article did not exist and the additional penalty of ineligibility” provided “was only optional”. The Court clarified that "cassation will be limited to sentences, the provisions relating to guilt not incurring censorship".
After her conviction on appeal in May, the 77-year-old elected official had announced a recourse: her appeal in cassation, suspensive, had enabled her to announce in June her candidacy for a fourth mandate.
Maryse Joissains was sentenced for the improper promotion of a driver (since canceled by the Council of State) and the hiring in the community of communes of a collaborator in charge of animal protection when this field did not fall within the competence of this community.
The day after this conviction, she announced an appeal and then her candidacy, giving a boost to the battle for this posh city of Bouches-du-Rhône, a bastion of the right, but which the presidential majority can hope to bring down.
Possible alliances
She had not ruled out the idea of alliances, except with the far right. "I do not criticize Marine Le Pen or Marion Maréchal-Le Pen," she said, however, on France Bleu, refusing to "throw anathema or stigma" on the National Gathering.
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Mayor of Aix-en-Provence for almost 19 years, Maryse Joissains-Masini had succeeded the socialist Jean-François Picheral. Her husband, Alain Joissains, had been mayor of the city from 1978 to 1983, and condemned in 1986 on appeal for concealment of abuse of social goods. Their daughter Sophie is assistant to the mayor of Aix and senator UDI of Bouches-du-Rhône.