Promote a balance sheet and sell a new project.
Here is what the outgoing presidents of regions have tackled in recent weeks, during a somewhat particular campaign, between the health crisis and the prospect of the 2022 presidential election. Two days before the first round of these regional elections on Sunday, we have spent reviewing their proposals, while some prance at the top of the polls and who should win without problem, while others see their re-election promising to be more complicated because of the RN.
Overview.
Read alsoRegional: why the abstention promises to be massive (once again)?
Don't say "program" anymore
It seems the time is over when the candidates lined up very definite, quantified proposals, the results of which were then opposed to them.
The slowness of the implementation of their program, the experience of the previous mandate, push most of the candidates for their re-election to soften their vocabulary.
We therefore no longer say “program” but “project”;
we no longer commit to “creating” thousands of jobs, but we set an “objective” for the duration of the term of office.
Resold proposals
Between a modification and its entry into force, between a construction and its inauguration, public action takes time. Sometimes more than the six years of the regional mandate, even extended by a few months due to a pandemic. As a result, most of the outgoing people undertake, as they already did in 2015, to equip their entire territory with very high-speed internet. This is the case of Marie-Guite Dufay (PS) in Bourgogne Franche-Comté or Alain Rousset in New Aquitaine. This makes it possible to shorten the time for the second term: in Normandy, Hervé Morin, who kept the same project name between 2015 and 2021 - "Conquering Normandy" - he undertakes to provide "very high speed for all in 2024 ”, mid-term if he is re-elected.
Carole Delga (Occitanie), Valérie Pécresse (Ile-de-France), Xavier Bertrand (Hauts-de-France) are also committed to completing “100% video protection” of stations, trains and around high schools. Security being a key theme of this 2021 campaign, but not a regional competence, this is how the candidates bounce back on the rise of the phenomenon of gangs clashing near establishments.
Always on the security side, Renaud Muselier (Paca) undertakes to impose community service (TIG) on any offender committing damage.
In 2015, his predecessor Christian Estrosi wanted to compel the perpetrators of incivility to do so.
A few weeks ago, in Le Parisien, Valérie Pécresse pledged to create a regional agency so that 100% of TIGs are carried out within three months of the sentencing.
Penalty which can only be imposed by a judge.
Beautiful promises
In New Aquitaine, Alain Rousset and his running mate want "to remove pesticides, including for farmers".
It is a little quick to silence the heated debates that have opposed individuals and farmers on the issue for years.
On the other side of the Hexagon, it is Renaud Muselier who undertakes to multiply by five, in just six years, the production of renewable energies.
Some notable dropouts
Reality suddenly called them to order: unlike 2015, neither Carole Delga nor Valérie Pécresse proposed this year to introduce a tax on heavy goods vehicles in transit in their respective regions.
The Socialist President of Occitania broke her teeth there while she hoped to bring together, thanks to the significant truck traffic between Europe and Spain, enough to finance the Bordeaux-Toulouse high-speed line.
The prize for out of scope proposals goes to ...
There is indeed Valérie Pécresse… The president of Ile-de-France is committed to the “deployment of facial recognition at the entrance to stations”.
Without specifying that for the moment it can only ask the government, like others among the Republicans or ex-Republicans, that a debate be opened on the subject.
There is also Xavier Bertrand, who wants to punish with a year of non-convertible prison any author of a physical assault against a member of the police.
But, undoubtedly, the prize for the impossible goes to Renaud Muselier. The LR candidate in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, at the head of the region since 2017, goes far beyond his prerogatives when he commits to have the murderers of police officers or gendarmes sentenced to life imprisonment. This penal sanction necessarily passes through the government, the National Assembly or the Senate, three institutions to which Muselier no longer belongs. The LR candidate also wants to train high school students, young people aged 16 to 20 roughly, to detect signs of radicalization in their classmates.
