Lawyer at the Paris bar, Bernard Carayon is LR mayor of Lavaur (Tarn).
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It is the true left which abolished the accumulation of mandates (François Hollande) and it is the false right (Édouard Philippe) which returns to this reform applied for ten years.
It was nourished by the hypocrisy and ignorance of public life.
Accumulation, practiced in all political groups, including the least conservative, would have made it possible to build and protect electoral strongholds, thus hindering the renewal of local councilors.
Parliamentary absenteeism was also highlighted at the “Navy bar” to justify the abandonment of accumulation.
But public opinion is unaware that a debate cannot be shared peacefully if the Chambers are in full session.
Each subject mobilizes its specialists, and it is better to have a small number of informed parliamentarians than multiple elected officials intervening on points of detail in order to “boost” their presence index.
I remember, for example, exchanges on the military programming law where courtesy competed with competence and intellectual honesty.
There were less than twenty of us in session.
Parliamentary life, moreover, is obviously not limited to the hemicycle and is nourished, in Paris, by meetings of committees and political or thematic groups, meetings with associations, personalities, administrations of the State, conferences.
Not counting, of course, the work in the constituency.
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Local assemblies do not attract more crowds, and it would not occur to their elected officials to condemn the population's lack of interest in their debates.
Accumulation has obvious advantages.
Whether or not one has followed, in the past, the
cursus honorum
– inaugurated by a local mandate before accessing the National Assembly or the Senate, competence, in many areas, is acquired, in addition to one's course professional, in the life of local communities: town planning, housing, social and financial issues, public works, security are on the daily menu.
This is where we measure with their victims the stacking of levels of responsibility, the tangle of skills, the weight, the complexity, sometimes the absurdity of the regulations, but above all the need to forge consensus through pedagogy.
Approaching these subjects requires listening, for action.
An MP who has not experienced the transformation of an idea and his long administrative journey, punctuated by meetings, will remain above ground.
And then, at his town's Saturday market, he will quickly understand whether he voted for a good or absurd law on Wednesday.
Because if we only hesitantly address the deputy (whose responsibilities we know nothing), access to the mayor is direct.
And its immediate evaluation.
This is why it was quite common to be elected at the head of a municipality with the support of one's die-hard opponents in the legislative election.
This single memory tempers the character.
In the past, there have been “lords” of accumulation: Jean Lecanuet, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Pierre Mauroy, Jacques Chirac, Dominique Baudis, Philippe Seguin, and so many others.
Was their national mission altered by their local responsibilities?
Obviously not.
Their lands benefited from their networks, their power.
Their successes have radiated well beyond the markets of their region.
And then, to be respected locally by the prefect, a good accumulation was useful.
Refusing to the mayor what the deputy would obtain from an arbitration by the minister, negotiated at the refreshment bar, after questions to the government, was dangerous.
Let us find deputies anchored in real life, whose skills will have been validated not only by their natural political supporters, but by all the others, grateful for an effective local service.
Bernard Carayon
Finally, the deputy mayor was the deputy of all the other mayors of the department.
And everyone can benefit, in the face of a State that is often slow, finicky and stingy, from the benefit of this privilege acquired by popular confidence.
Why, moreover, would accumulation be prohibited only to elected officials when it is practiced by so many professions?
Academics, the only civil servants who can also be parliamentary, are often editorialists, consultants, journal or collection directors in publishing houses;
some journalists like to share their talents with several media outlets, major schools or general meetings of companies;
trade unionists, senior civil servants, doctors, lawyers or notaries are often diligent in the work of their orders, their bodies or their corporations.
Why give them the monopoly on hyperactivity and efficiency?
Because experience shows that the more responsibilities we have, the quicker we get to the essentials.
Small minds, obviously, associate the accumulation of compensation with the accumulation of mandates even though they are capped and, to be fair, modest.
The obligations of transparency also weighing on income outside political life and assets, fuel an unhealthy debate among those who are jealous by vocation.
I know remarkable people who will never get involved in politics so as not to be the target of the media and the mediocre.
Let us return, ten years later, to common sense.
Let us find deputies anchored in real life, whose skills will have been validated not only by their natural political supporters, but by all the others, grateful for an effective local service.
Abstention has continued to increase, despite this ridiculous prohibition which only benefits the executive: it is so practical for a government to have, on the other side, deputies without roots, foreign to the
humus
from France!
The mediocrity and verbal violence of certain parliamentarians are the daughters of this.
Yes, abstention will decline if the National Assembly is no longer the scene of the one-upmanship and demagoguery which mark the contempt of the French.