Paris (AFP)

Will he be a candidate? Top of the list? Six weeks before the election, Edouard Philippe is preparing to lift the veil on his ambitions for the municipal elections in his home port of Le Havre, where he is expected to meet Friday evening.

If there is an obligatory passage of any public intervention of the Prime Minister for two and a half years, it is this one: a reference to Le Havre mischievously placed, always to sing the merits of the city. A way to nurture a symbolic link between Matignon and the Norman city, of which he was mayor from 2010 to 2017 and which he showed with undisguised pleasure to his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev last June.

In September, Mr. Philippe, to whom intentions were credited in Paris, had suddenly revived the hypothesis of a new candidacy.

"You are never a candidate except in the place where you are rooted," he had hammered at the University of La République in September. "And me my guts, they taste like salt water", had continued the one whose great-grandfather, Louis, was a dock worker cégétiste in Le Havre.

At the same time, Mr. Philippe does not hide his taste for municipal elections - "an election that fascinates me", he claims in private - and the profession of mayor - "the level of public action that I prefer" - .

But "fairly silent" on his choice, observes a relative, Mr. Philippe has for the moment let nothing filter, recalling that he would decide in January ... even if it means waiting for the last day!

Taken over by the pension reform, the Prime Minister has in reality had little window to give the solution to his personal equation.

Because will he be able to campaign, in a busy Parisian agenda and a particularly tense social context in the city? In Le Havre, actions "dead port" have multiplied and according to a police source, several hundred people are expected Friday for a rally on the sidelines of the meeting.

Elected in the first round in 2014 with 52% of the vote, under the label Les Républicains, the Prime Minister would also risk doing less, despite his national stature.

But at the same time, Mr. Philippe might want to taste "this part of anointing with universal suffrage", slips a friend.

Because the Prime Minister no longer has the sole elective mandate than that of municipal councilor. A meager mattress for those who hold a precarious lease by nature in Matignon.

- Partitioning -

"Give up the idea of ​​being mayor of Le Havre when it all stops, it costs him a lot," said the same close. "There is a part of intimate questioning: does he have nothing more to say as mayor of Le Havre, has he finished his work, is he not planning to do so more? ", he adds.

In fact, Mr. Philippe took care to keep active branches in Le Havre, where he often goes in the greatest discretion, as anxious to compartmentalize his two lives. His involvement became more visible when he personally assured the resignation of his first successor, Luc Lemonnier, caught in the storm after the dissemination of very suggestive photos.

For the past two and a half years, he "has come back regularly (...) either to see his friends, to recharge his batteries, to take the pulse of the population and also to follow the major construction and town planning projects which he was often at the origin ", testifies to AFP the current mayor (LR) Jean-Baptiste Gastinne.

The outgoing councilor also stresses that his predecessor has increased the frequency of his visits, at the rate of one per week since the beginning of the year in order to prepare the election.

"In the spirit of the people of Le Havre, Edouard Philippe is still the mayor", observes the deputy Agir Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo, evoking the "pride" of the inhabitants.

There remains, however, a considerable uncertainty which will need to be clarified before the election.

If Mr. Philippe launched himself at the top of the list, he would indeed have to comply with the non-cumulation rule and choose between Matignon and the Town Hall. Continuity or the call of the open sea.

© 2020 AFP