Marseille (AFP)

A page turns Monday in Marseille, with the 198th and last municipal council of the mayor LR Jean-Claude Gaudin who, after 25 years at the head of the second city of France, will not be represented in March.

Convened at 8:30 a.m., the council will vote some 150 deliberations, two of which concern sensitive files on the state of schools and substandard housing. It will be especially for Mr. Gaudin, 80, the last opportunity to thunder in the solemn framework of the hemicycle his Provencal accent, to defend a balance sheet challenged as never before 50 days from the municipal elections.

For the majority of the Republicans, the political farewell session of this baron of the right, who was president of the Senate and minister, promises to be "moving", declared one of the closest collaborators, his director of services Jean- Claude Gondard.

Mr. Gaudin will probably have a word on what he considers his main achievements, and which he recalled during his vows to the press last Monday: unemployment halved since his arrival, even if it remains above the national average, the explosion of cruise tourism, or the requalification of the Euromed urban area along the coast and the opening of the Museum of Civilizations and the Mediterranean (Mucem), two projects partly managed by the State.

The mayor, who sits on the municipal council since his election in 1965 on the lists of the socialist Gaston Defferre, and has had more than 31,000 deliberations adopted since 1995, will also vote several street names, including a place François Moscati, named the former boss of the powerful municipal union Force Ouvrière, and a street Guy Philip, one of his former communicators.

Figures of his majority for years, the two candidates from the Republicans who compete for municipal, the president of the department and of the metropolis Martine Vassal (supported by the party) and Bruno Gilles (in dissent) should weigh their words, they both try to distinguish their action from the mayor's heritage.

The opposition, on the benches of which sit notably the candidates RN Stéphane Ravier or various left Samia Ghali, should underline the deficiencies of the city, marked by very strong inequalities of wealth, the state of dilapidation of many public schools and the the seriousness of the substandard housing problem, tragically revealed by the collapse of two buildings on November 5, 2018, which left eight people dead.

© 2020 AFP