REPORTAGE
Report on a "city adrift" against "unfair pamphlet": the mayor of Marseille Jean-Claude Gaudin on Monday lashed out at the "bad work" of the financial magistrates who rustle its management, and provide arguments to those who hope to tip this bastion The Republicans (LR) to the municipal.
A difficult report for the majority
Two reports of the regional chamber of accounts (CRC) were officially presented to the city council on Monday: they overwhelm the outgoing team, its questionable property practices to the financial situation "worrying" of the city, through a staff management sometimes illegal. "I know that I did not do everything well, I know that there are many things to do, but I put all my heart and all my time," defended Jean-Claude Gaudin, 80 years, for whom this "indictment, even (this) pamphlet" is "the most stigmatizing, imperfect, unfair and unfounded" he has received since his arrival in the chair of mayor in 1995.
If he "takes note of a constructive and useful part" of these reports, Jean-Claude Gaudin "contests an important part, marked by breaches of ethics, (a) lack of balance and equity". On the specific points raised by magistrates, buildings sold at a loss to dilapidated schools, deputies to the mayor took turns for several hours Monday morning to try to respond to observations.
"Where did the money go, sir?"
The mayor, he, also sounded the political charge, denouncing "an above ground control with blinkers and earplugs to (...) not hear the successes" of the municipality. He promised to "seize the first president of the Court of Accounts", saying that the local gendarme of finances had flouted "the deontology". It will be done to correct "all that is inaccurate, deformed, forgotten or defaming". The mayor believes that in two years of investigations, magistrates have not taken into account the responses of the city.
For its part, the opposition was virulent during the municipal council on Monday morning: "Where did the money go, Mayor?", Invoked the elected National Assembly (RN) of the seventh sector of the city. "Did you use it to finance your projects as expensive as useless?" Where is the money from the Marseillais? It has not been invested either in schools, in road infrastructure, or in the quality of air, so where did the money go? "he asked the outgoing mayor again.
" It's a system that prefers flattering support rather than meeting needs "These reports fall right also for the left, accusing the municipality of plundering the city: "The disease [Marseille] is your political system that makes the electoralism alpha and omega of all your decisions ", snapped Benoît Payan (Socialist Party). "It's a system that prefers flattering support rather than meeting needs, that renovates schools only because parents vote well, not because the kids are cold." These reports seem to kick off a municipal campaign that promises to be hot.