Lille (AFP)

Heavyweight of the executive, Gérald Darmanin lifted the real-false suspense Monday evening by announcing his candidacy at the top of the list in the municipal elections in Tourcoing (North), an electoral battle which he engages "to be mayor", which could ultimately mean his departure from government.

"After having spoken a lot with the municipal team, I will lead the list to the municipal elections in Tourcoing" on March 15 and 22, said the Minister of Action and Public Accounts in an interview with La Voix du Nord.

Emmanuel Macron "authorized me to be in the countryside" and "if I am at the top of the list, it is to be mayor", adds Mr. Darmanin, already at the head of the city from 2014 to 2017.

Under the non-cumulation rule, does he therefore intend to choose Tourcoing rather than his portfolio as minister?

"There is no legal rule but there is a political rule. Even if I was mayor and minister for seven months, I believe that it is not healthy to combine the two in the long term. I will obviously comply with the rule chosen by the President of the Republic. Minister, this is temporary. Mayor, local elected representative, is the commitment of a lifetime, "he replied.

It remains to be seen what exactly he means by "over time" ... According to a government source, Mr. Darmanin met recently with the Head of State on his candidacy and Emmanuel Macron would have assured him that he was not opposed to him combining his post as minister and his function as mayor until "major post-municipal reshuffle which could occur in the summer of 2020".

"Darmanin is in a position of strength. Do you know many of the LREM mayors who will be elected or re-elected in March? In addition, he presents himself in a city of more than 100,000 inhabitants and popular," deciphers a political tenor.

- "He will remain a minister!" -

"At the reshuffle, I put a note that he will remain minister with a good promotion. Macron needs to keep it," added this elected official. Leaves then that Gérald Darmanin entrusts again the keys of the city, as currently, to Jean-Marie Vuylsteker until the end of the quinquennium to take over the reins thereafter.

In La Voix du Nord, the minister, who remains first deputy and omnipresent in his city where he spends several days each week, specifies that he "concluded" with the current mayor that he was "the best placed to carry municipal aspirations in the continuity of what we have done for six years ".

If the minister had said that he would declare his flame to the Tourquennois on Valentine's Day, February 14, he finally declared himself earlier because of "the strong enthusiasm" on the ground: "I do not didn't feel like making some of the people wait. "

Gérald Darmanin, 37, who set the reform of the withholding tax on income tax at heart, joined La République en Marche in the fall of 2017 a few months after entering government.

Close to Xavier Bertrand and Nicolas Sarkozy, he was elected mayor of Tourcoing under the UMP label in 2014 with 45% of the votes and 671 votes ahead of the outgoing socialist mayor, at the end of a triangular with the FN.

"It is a good thing" that he presents himself "because the president has, on several occasions, encouraged his ministers to be candidates for municipal elections. They are thus more seasoned and more legitimate in the eyes of the French," reacted the entourage of the President of the Republic.

"When he was mayor in 2014, he said he liked his mandate as mayor, but as soon as he had the opportunity to be minister, he left Tourcoing, while putting in his place people whose knew that they would not overshadow him, "denounced Véronique Gruneissen, ex-elected PS of Tourcoing.

"It is not respectful of the vote of Tourquennois. He accumulates on two tables, he always keeps one foot in the government, another in Tourcoing. If he loses the municipal elections, he returns to the government? If he is elected mayor, he abandons his portfolio as minister? These are questions to ask, "she says.

apz-eva-pol-frd / eva / it

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