Marseille (AFP)
Investigators in charge of investigations into suspicions of proxy fraud during the municipal elections in Marseille have also started to look into possible maneuvers with residents of an Ehpad, we learned from sources close to the file on Thursday.
The electoral campaign had been shaken up last Friday by the opening, by the parquet floor of Marseilles, of a preliminary investigation in particular for "false" about the establishment of proxies for the second round in the camp of the candidate LR to the Martine Vassal town hall, according to a "simplified" procedure but which could be illegal.
Wednesday evening, France 2 broadcast new testimonies, this time of relatives of residents of a retirement home discovering that powers of attorney had been established in the name of some of them, without their knowledge and even while some were suffering from neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.
In total, around fifty residents have given power of attorney for the municipal authorities in this accommodation establishment for dependent elderly people (Ehpad) which includes 130 places, including 15 for people with Alzheimer's, according to the signature lists consulted by the AFP.
France 2 collected testimonies from relatives of 11 residents. The link with one or other of the municipal candidates has not been established.
"It is pitiful," reacted to AFP the son of one of the residents aged 89, who discovered a few days ago that a power of attorney had been made for his mother suffering from "senile dementia" . In this case, the register of signatures was not signed by the representative for his mother, which indicates that there was finally no vote, noted AFP.
"I do not know the name of the person who was given the power of attorney, but it is impossible that my mother did this. She has just asked me for news of her mother who died in 1985," he said. He underlines.
The man who testified anonymously so as not to be "contacted by possible politicians trying to influence him" assured that he planned to file a complaint against X.
As for the investigators, the investigations "are continuing", said a source close to the AFP file: the police, who have already searched Martine Vassal's campaign headquarters in particular and seized registers at the central town hall in Marseille, "also verify the problem of Ehpad", and in particular that pointed out by France 2.
"Hearings of principals and proxies", that is to say voters who would have given their proxy and people who voted on their behalf in the first round, are in progress, she continued.
The new revelations of France 2 have provoked many reactions in a city, a bastion of Republicans led by Jean-Claude Gaudin for a quarter of a century, where the outcome of the election is more uncertain than ever.
Head of list of the left (Printemps marseillais) in the sector where the Ehpad in question is located, Yannick Ohanessian condemned "the absolute cynicism and without any morals" of those who were able to "extort from people in great vulnerability" these powers of attorney. The candidate RN Stéphane Ravier condemned "immoral" and "disgusting" behavior.
"As professionals in this sector, it is unacceptable that one of the fundamental rights of dependent elderly people in our care is thus violated", for its part reacted the union South social health in a statement.
The CFDT of Bouches-du-Rhône said for its part "stupefied": "These methods, if they prove to be established, are from another time and exclude their authors from the democratic field".
© 2020 AFP