Grenoble (AFP)

Alain Carignon made a remarkable return Monday to the Grenoble city council, where the outgoing environmental mayor Eric Piolle came under criticism during a budget debate in the air of jousting between competitors for the municipal.

"It's a singular session," said Mathieu Chamussy (DVD, ex-LR), leader of the right-wing opposition. And "when the wolf prowls around the sheepfold, only the lambs are afraid," he said, leaving everyone to recognize each other.

In his back, surrounded by empty chairs, a ghost little frequented by his peers: Alain Carignon, the former RPR mayor sentenced to prison for corruption in 1996.

The successive resignations of two co-listers - including a local LR official - voluntarily allowed his return to the council, offering him this platform three months before the municipal elections. And in the only city of more than 100,000 inhabitants managed by an ecologist-far left-citizens alliance, the deadline is scrutinized.

Dozens of hostile demonstrators welcomed him at the entrance to the headquarters of the Grenoble metropolis, where the assembly of the city is held after the arson attack on its premises in September.

France Gall's song "resist" resounds, citizens brandishing parodic placards: "cleaner prisons for Alain Carignon", "the men in front, the women behind", "the Grenoble-Levallois twinning committee" is present, reference to the legal problems of the Balkany who also want to represent themselves.

"Carignon which sits in Grenoble, it is a great farce", explained to AFP David Bodinier, of the Assembly of Commons, a citizen association. "Our commons are water and energy that Alain Carignon has privatized" when he was mayor by management delegations, he said.

- The "ball" of Piolle's assessment -

Inside the building with filtered entrances, the debates are sharp but without voices. Alain Carignon opened the discussions with an oral question on the city center, the facilities for "motorways by bicycle", regretting "the absence of consultation" with the traders.

Eric Piolle refers "city councilor" to his "proposals from another age" on car traffic.

But accusations of falsity or insincerity will go well on the presentation of the primitive budget for 2020. The one that the next majority will have in hand to start his mandate.

Grenoble is bowing under the weight of debt, it is a fact. But for Hakim Sabri, finance assistant, "the Grenoblois have not finished paying the financial fury" of the Carignon era.

This debt "is so not mine," retorted Mr. Carignon, referring to a budget "partly false by omission" because "Grenoble is on the verge of bankruptcy". "We can recognize the expertise in forgery!", Replied Patrice Voir (PCF).

But the numerous interventions of Mr. Carignon did not discourage the other elected officials from refocusing the debates on the results of the outgoing team. "The ball of the balance sheet, it is yours!" Estimated Mr. Chamussy, attacking the two legs of the "identity" of Piolle and his team "the left and the ecology".

Poor air quality, lower subsidies to the municipal center for social action ... and especially the closing of libraries.

"It is a shame for a man on the left," said Mireille d'Ornano, counselor and also candidate Les Patriotes (far right).

This symbolic episode, a link in an austerity plan for public services, had marked the term of Eric Piolle.

"You are now announcing free libraries!" Said Sarah Boukaala (PRG). "You wanted to do politics differently and you did sadly classic: tighten the screws at the start of the mandate, opening the valves at the end".

Outside the building, another municipal protagonist hoped to make his voice heard: Olivier Noblecourt, former assistant to Michel Destot (PS) about to leave his post as interministerial delegate for the fight against poverty of the government of Edouard Philippe , officially entered the campaign at the head of a left-wing coalition.

With two objectives: to double the LREM candidate Emilie Chalas and to embody an "alternative" to the Piolle-Carignon duel.

© 2019 AFP