- After the first round of municipal elections on March 15, there are still three candidates for mayor of Nice: the outgoing mayor (LR), Philippe Vardon (RN) and Jean-Marc Governatori for the Nice ecological list.
- Arriving in pole position with 47.62% of the vote, Christian Estrosi is an ultra-favorite.
- He explains to 20 Minutes why he says he gave up campaigning and what the health crisis has changed in his program.
He was on all fronts at the height of the Covid-19 crisis. Himself affected by the disease, the mayor LR of Nice, arrived far ahead in the first round of the municipal elections, has multiplied initiatives and speaking out in the media. Too much, according to his competitors, who today criticize him for refusing the debate before the second round.
For 20 Minutes , Christian Estrosi has agreed to take stock of this particular campaign and explains why he says he gave up conducting it before the new poll on Sunday.
You have given up participating in the second round televised debate with your two competitors. Why ?
The campaign got him in the first round. Everyone was able to present their project. I exposed mine. We have already debated. Today we are in a second round with a very specific context. And the people of Nice would not understand, while we are still in a health crisis and we see the unemployment rate going up considerably, that I do not devote myself until the last second to the essentials what they expect from their mayor. What would I say if I had not put all my energy into protecting the people of Nice, to save businesses, to launch a campaign which should make it possible to compensate for a large part of the losses in hotels, restaurants and thousands of jobs that it represents? Imagine that I am campaigning, going around the meals saying, "I'm counting on you Sunday" ...
Your competitors reproach you for your “hypermediatisation” during the health crisis, accusing you, on the contrary, of campaigning not through this bias…
The emergency law of March 24, 2020 "to deal with the Covid-19 epidemic" transferred to the mayor in place the responsibility for taking the necessary measures to supplement those of the State. I acted and the media wanted to know under what conditions I complied with this law. I only answered. As with this interview, it was not I who asked you to come to me. And then, with confinement, in what other way than through the media could I have explained that I was protecting the people of Nice with masks that they had to come and collect from drives, that we had taken curfew measures?
What is the health situation today?
In the end, containment was more effective here and it also probably went through this institutional communication. At the Nice University Hospital, there are no longer any cases that return to emergency, nor to a resuscitation bed. And in the epidemiological survey that we launched on a large scale, out of nearly 50,000 people who have already volunteered to be tested for fifteen days, only 1% was confronted with the virus.
Is this crisis causing you to review certain priorities in your program?
I was already proposing my project for an Agency for health and environmental security and risk management. It will be an entity which will also take into account the terrorist threat, the bad weather, the increasingly hot summer, but also the seismic alert. Before the Covid, I wanted to spread this project over two or three years. We will finally put it in place right away. Its creation has already been approved by the municipal council. The rest of the program remains unchanged. I want to create double the planted areas of what we have already done, ie 70 ha more. Our 154 playgrounds will be able to be made permeable thanks to European aid. It's 20 hectares. The doubling of the green flow [with the demolition of the Acropolis palace] is another twenty more. And then we will be able to go to the end of this reasoning with the wells of freshness that we will continue to install in Nice Meridia. There will be on these spaces a Territorial Agricultural Plan, which is inspired by what happened during the confinement, and which will allow us to have a quasi-self-sufficiency in short circuit for early vegetables.
“It turns out that I have much more recognized environmentalists [than Jean-Marc Governatori] on my list. "
It's an idea that you share with Jean-Marc Governatori's Nice ecological list. Is it a policy that you will delegate to him, as he proposed?
I happen to have much more recognized environmentalists on my list. The environment will be a transversal delegation which will irrigate all projects, in particular for development.
The cycle paths that you have launched for deconfinement have often aroused strong reactions from residents. What do you plan on this?
You have to have a global vision of mobility. We will not be able to move everyone by bicycle. It is necessary to develop its use thanks to having a network of cycle paths. It may already have been considerably extended because we have delivered a tram between east and west which has freed up bus traffic on the surface. The experiments launched at the end of the confinement were experiments and they will continue in concert. But my priority in terms of travel is first of all the automobile, and in particular with the Mathis track where I have started a project which will make it possible to streamline traffic for the 35,000 vehicles which use it daily with a direct connection at the highway. It is also by making road traffic more fluid that new bicycle paths can be installed.
“The extension of line 1 in the Paillon valley may be finally by tram until the end. "
What about public transport?
Line 1 must be split between north and south. It is not in my program but with the experience of deconfinement, I decided to offer a Public Transport in clean site [TCSP] on Cessole and Gambetta which could transport 30,000 passengers in two and a half years on the model of a BHNS [Bus with a high level of service], as Cannes set up on Boulevard Carnot. The idea is to relieve the tram. The extension of line 1 in the Paillon valley will also be launched and maybe we could finally do it by tram until the exit of Drap. This solution would be less expensive than the train-tram. Studies are underway with the SNCF.
Municipal
"Let [the future mayor of Nice] delegate to us what we know how to do", asks the ecologist Jean-Marc Governatori
Municipal
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- Christian Estrosi
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