After the political and media hype on Thursday, it's time to take a step back. In an interview with Ouest-France, the former mayor (DVD) of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins (Loire-Atlantique) Yannick Morez commented Friday his resignation formalized two days earlier. A decision that brought the entire political class in tune, up to the President of the Republic himself who gave him his support. "I think if the announcement of my resignation has taken on such a magnitude, it is because there have been so many during this mandate. This may be the straw that broke the camel's back. If it can make things happen, so much the better, "says Yannick Morez, after deploring Wednesday the "lack of support of the State" in the face of violence and the criminal act of which he had been the target. At the end of March, a fire hit his cars and the front of his house.
In recent weeks, the former mayor, at the center of a local controversy, was under pressure from small groups and a part of the nationalist right who opposed a project to transfer a center for asylum seekers, yet already present, near a school. While his resignation has shone the spotlight on the more general protection of local elected officials facing a series of physical or verbal violence, Yannick Morez reports that he "did not expect such a runaway at all, but then not at all." What then of the role of the state in this affair?
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If the former mayor specifies again to have felt "helpless, isolated and left without help" in the middle of controversy, he sees positive in this whole affair: "If my resignation were to serve one thing, I would like it to be the rapprochement of state services with local elected officials. Today, it feels like living in two opposite worlds." Faced with a general increase of 32% in violence against local elected officials in 2022 according to Beauvau, the president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) David Lisnard called Thursday for a "precise study of the phenomenon of aggression of elected officials". The PS will organize a march in Saint-Brevin on May 24.
