Le Havre (AFP)
Premises of the municipal police, visit of districts, discharge: the Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, candidate for the town hall of Le Havre, carried out "quietly" campaign Friday in his stronghold, far from the cameras.
In a discreet Friday morning, the head of government went to the inauguration of the new premises of the municipal police, noted an AFP correspondent.
An off-camera visit, for which, apart from his campaign team and his entourage, no one had been informed, not even the municipal police.
The transfer of the municipal police to these new premises, covering an area of 1,500 m2, had been recorded when he was mayor of Le Havre in 2007, as part of a call for projects for reconstructed cities. A 2.5 million euros investment project, 480,000 euros of which was financed by the Normandy region.
Edouard Philippe took the opportunity to reiterate his intention to "carry out a campaign of quiet strolling", without camera, in the streets of the city.
Accompanied by a bodyguard, he went to different districts on the heights of the city, had coffee, lent himself to photos with the inhabitants. He notably visited a neighborhood undergoing rehabilitation.
He also went to the old landfill of the city of Le Havre known as Dollemard, closed in the late 1990s, for which the state and communities are looking for a solution.
In 2018 this site still dumped "between 30 and 80 m3 per year" of waste into the sea, the town hall said at the time.
Édouard Philippe announced on January 31 that he would run as the top candidate for municipal elections in Le Havre, a city of which he was mayor since 2010 until his appointment to Matignon in 2017.
If elected, Mr. Philippe repeated that he would cede the chair to the outgoing mayor (LR) Jean-Baptiste Gastinne, the time of his lease in Matignon.
© 2020 AFP