"It's oil for food his thing, there!" It's not a very new world! This collaborator of a regional leader cannot believe it. This Monday afternoon, the President of Regions of France Renaud Muselier (LR) reported during a conf-call with his counterparts, at the head of the different regions of France, the words that Emmanuel Macron would have said to him during a lunch the same day at the Elysée. According to this account, the President of the Republic would have offered financial aid to the regions in exchange for the postponement of the regional elections, initially scheduled for March 2021, after the presidential election. What "formally challenges" - a posteriori - Muselier in a press release.
Several regional sources nevertheless confirm to the Parisian the content of the presidential remarks reported by Le Figaro. "I have no reason to give gifts to the regions, because this is where most of my opposition is located", would have launched the head of state, during this lunch with the president of the Paca region and that (PS) of Center-Val-de-Loire, François Bonneau. An obvious reference to the ambitions of certain right-wing region presidents such as Xavier Bertrand (Hauts-de-France), Valérie Pécresse (Ile-de-France) or even Laurent Wauquiez (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes).
Immediately reported to the other regional presidents, the presidential remarks caused a scandal. "It's blackmail. Everyone was upwind, right as left, "slips a relative of a" presidential "in question. “Postponing elections is not a choice of personal convenience, neither of the President of the Republic nor of the presidents of regions. You have to respect the people, ”says Valérie Pécresse, for example. “We were all open to the idea that there could be a great moment for our country, that it would come out of the handicap represented by Jacobinism. But here we are on the c ... ", says the president (centrist) of Normandy Hervé Morin, who denounces a" political, electoral operation ".
"It is an admission of weakness"
At the Elysée, it is confirmed that the question of the postponement of the regional arises, but "in a logic of general interest". “It was not at all the state of mind in which the president presented this idea of the postponement, we defend ourselves at the palace. While a recovery plan will be put in place in the fall with which the regions will be associated, is this electoral calendar still relevant today given the situation we are experiencing? "
The subject was carefully avoided in the final press release from Régions de France, which confines itself to asking that the regions be "endowed with real power in the fields of the economy, employment, ecological transition, Europe. and health ”, in line with the promise of decentralization made by Emmanuel Macron on television on Sunday evening.
But in reality, more than ever, the towel is now burning between Emmanuel Macron and the regional presidents. "It is without filter, it's incredible," sighs the entourage of one of the heads of a regional executive. Another frenzy: “The presidents of regions already noted that Macron had trouble saying the word region in his speeches when they were mobilized to compensate for the shortcomings of the state during the Covid crisis. It is an admission of weakness, it shows that he is afraid of an electoral beating before the presidential election. "He is hard pressed," concludes a regional president.