Lille (AFP)

End of a suspense that was no longer really one: Mayor PS Lille Martine Aubry announced Thursday night in La Voix du Nord his candidacy for a fourth term, promising a program "socially just" and "ecologically strong".

At the head of the belfry of the capital of Flanders for 18 years, the former minister of Lionel Jospin had assured after his re-election in 2014 that it was his last mandate. "Barring exceptional circumstances," she had slipped.

"Between the social inequalities that have not been settled, the natural disasters, the harsh international climate, we feel that we are in a period when the country is under tension, we have to hold the bar. I can suggest to Lille to go further with them ", highlights 69-year-old Martine Aubry in La Voix du Nord to justify this ultimate political fight.

Faced with liberalism "at all", according to her, President Emmanuel Macron and the environmental emergency in a city heavily affected by pollution, the one that carried the emblematic law on 35 hours intends to focus his campaign on a program "socially just" and "ecologically strong".

"My belief is that there will be no full transition without social justice, I will be the guarantor of both," AFP Martine Aubry told AFP broad social movement against pension reform.

If she claims to have "matured a lot" in her decision to run again, her candidacy was an open secret. In the starting blocks for months, the daughter of Jacques Delors launched in 2018 his think-tank, "Lille 2030", before acquiring a micro-party, with a funding association "Lille future".

"I leave for a full term" of six years, she assures the interrogations on a possible passage of relay en route. "If I did not feel good, if I did not feel enthusiastic, I would not go," she adds in the regional daily.

"What does not prevent me from preparing for the future," says AFP one who is often blamed for not having been able to prepare his succession. "I want to share what I have learned and also learn from those who will eventually embody the future of Lille," she adds.

- "Political animal" -

She did not say whether the other socialist baron in the north, former minister Patrick Kanner, with whom she made peace in the fall, would be on her list.

For the March 2020 poll, all headliners are now known in Lille.

Martine Aubry will have to confront her former cabinet director, Violette Spillebout, an ex-socialist who won the LREM nomination after a fierce battle with Macronist MP Valérie Petit.

It will also monitor, after the very good score of EELV in Lille in the European (21.7%, best result ever recorded in the city), the environmentalist Stéphane Baly, who sits in the municipal majority but judges that Ms. Aubry has "missed his exit".

Also competing are Julien Poix (LFI, which has two Lille MPs), former Minister Marc-Philippe Daubresse (LR), Eric Cattelin-Denu (RN) and the various right Thierry Pauchet, leader of the opposition Lille who refused to give way to M. Daubresse.

"Aubry is a political animal, she has the resource.The favorite is largely her," predicts a regional tenor.

The woman sweeps critics and warned about a possible "fight too much". "My passion is intact and I hear a lot of Lille people wanting to continue the common adventure," she says.

The battle for Lille is also important for a PS in collapse. Long hegemony in the North, it has lost almost everything in four years: the department, the region, the Lille metropolis and its deputies ... The belfry appears as the last regional stronghold to save.

© 2019 AFP