Special correspondent to Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence)
With his complexion reddened by the cold and the rain lashing his face, François Balique, 75, speaks with two radio journalists in the community hall that he opened to the press on this Easter Sunday, given the circumstances . With his hand screwed deep in his pocket, the mayor of Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) jingles an ounce of change while answering questions. The day before, bones of little Émile Soleil, missing since July 8, 2023, were found by a local hiker. News as unexpected as it is upsetting and which destroys all hope of finding the two and a half year old boy alive.
François Balique is one of those who, until the end, wanted to believe that the child with the dandelion behind his ear was not dead. Maybe held somewhere, but alive.
“I harbored this secret hope deep within myself
,” he confides in a calm voice but full of desolation. For almost nine months, the mayor of the once very quiet Vernet has lived to the rhythm of this enigmatic affair which has the whole of France in suspense.
“It was hard from the start. I fell back behind my duty to protect the residents and the town, particularly from this very strong media pressure
,” he summarizes. Out of modesty, he will not confide further about his own pain.
“The group above all!”
, he continues, recalling his years of scouting during the post-war period,
“at a time when it meant something”
.
A Provencal lower middle class family
Originally from Martigues (Bouches-du-Rhône), near Marseille, François Balique grew up in a lower-middle-class Provençal family. The son of a notary from Arles, he was born on August 30, 1949 in his father's own office. A classical and
“secular”
schooling followed (he insists), up to the Thiers high school in Marseille. A higher studies diploma in law later, François Balique obtained the bar. But before wearing the dress, he crossed the Mediterranean to impart his knowledge to students at the law faculty of Algiers, in Algeria, between 1975 and 1977. Back in France, he specialized in litigation for local authorities. The future mayor of Vernet then presents himself as a man of the left.
Interested in politics from high school in his position as final year class delegate, he subsequently became a
“student activist”,
as he himself says. Not without a little melancholy sneer, he admits to having done May 68.
“It was a different time!”
, he laughs. A member of the Socialist Party in the early 1980s, he fervently supported the candidacy of François Mitterrand for the presidency of the Republic in 1981. Two years later, he took the reins of the party for the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Only Lionel Jospin made him slam the door of the PS in 2002.
I know every meter of my town and my territory. And that’s better than anyone!
François Balique.
In 1986, he moved to the capital to join the prestigious Paris bar. Married and quickly father of four daughters, he did not abandon his heart of Provence. As for Vernet, still 170 kilometers from the Phocaean city, François Balique is not what we call a native of the country.
“My grandfather bought a property in the village in 1946, I have been coming there since I was a baby
,” he explains. Already a child, just like Émile before he disappeared, François Balique marveled at this nature in relief which was offered to him during the holidays, on his doorstep. Its green meadows and fragrant forests, its mountain circus and its rivers with white, hyaline waters.
François Balique first explored this territory on foot, then on horseback. For ten years, he acted as an equestrian guide every summer on the Ubac plateaus.
“Where the riders stopped, that’s where I started
,” he plasters. A knowledge of the field that he does not hesitate to highlight:
“I know every meter of my town and my territory. And that’s better than anyone!”
Forward but also at the service of journalists curious to know in which sector the skull of little Émile was discovered on Saturday: “
It is a place which is not ideal for hiking. It is the hunters who pass there. A logging was done in the fall in this area and at the time nothing was reported. And then it surprises me that it is in an area which, it must be remembered, has been very raked
,” he explains.
“Work, family, homeland”
Passionate lawyer, happy father, François Balique is best known and sought after these days in his capacity as mayor of Vernet. For 47 years he has continuously represented his hundred members, among whom there is only a very weak opposition, including, for example, the mother of the young farmer suspected for a time by investigators in the disappearance of little Émile. From 1983 to 2014, the mayor also chaired the Seyne community of communes. Faithful to his constituents as much as to his
“true republican”
principles , François Balique left behind him during his life only his faith, lost at the age of 17.
Presenting himself today as being “
neither left nor right and not at all Macronist
”, François Balique recognizes himself above all in the triptych “Work, Family, Homeland”.
“These are the three things I have dedicated my life to. I worked like crazy for 48 years, in love with my four daughters, my job as a lawyer, the Republic, rural life and, incidentally, pastoralism!” he
retorts with enthusiasm. It is therefore with his secular faith that he now prays that all light will be shed on the death of little Émile Soleil. Firstly, for the child's family, but also for his constituents to whom he wants to restore their peace of mind. And finally for himself, who has borne the weight of the mystery in the name of his commune for more than 250 days.