Perpignan (AFP)
The new mayor of Perpignan, Louis Aliot (RN), will try to conquer Saturday the presidency of Perpignan Méditerranée Métropole, but will have to count with rivals on the right, historically majority in the agglomeration.
In what he describes as the "third round" of municipal elections, Mr. Aliot will be opposed to Robert Vila, the LR mayor of Saint-Estève, a municipality of 12,000 inhabitants which borders Perpignan, and to Alain Ferrand, DVD mayor of the seaside resort of Barcarès.
To win the agglomeration, the winner will have to win 45 votes out of 88, while the municipal majority in Perpignan has 31 votes.
"Our urban community needs a strong and dynamic city center, but Perpignan absolutely needs all the municipalities to be able to play its role," wrote Louis Aliot to the other mayors of the agglomeration.
Perpignan Méditerranée Métropole brings together seaside resorts such as Canet-en-Roussillon, Le Barcarès, but also rural or wine-growing municipalities such as Rivesaltes, where the airport is also located, or Tautavel.
Robert Vila, for his part, claims to have "built a majority of governance" with the support of more than thirty municipalities, or about fifty community advisers.
The mayor of Saint-Estève says that if elected, the urban community, led since its creation by the mayor of Perpignan, "will not be opposed to the city center". But he intends to "rebalance" the balance of power.
Together with 17 other mayors, Mr. Vila had publicly supported the outgoing LR mayor, Jean-Marc Pujol, president of the agglomeration since 2014, in the space between the towers.
The defeat of the latter allowed the RN to record its first victory in a city of more than 100,000 inhabitants since Toulon in 1995.
"I don't want to be in confrontation like Mr. Vila, we must govern together in the general interest, we must not be ostracistic, nor sectarian, I am not RN but we must take into account universal suffrage ", says the 3rd candidate, Alain Ferrand, who prides himself on" very republican "relations with Louis Aliot.
Perpignan and the 35 municipalities of the agglomeration constitute a group of 270,000 inhabitants, including 120,000 in the prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales.
Louis Aliot made his last intervention at the National Assembly this week as RN deputy for the Pyrénées-Orientales. In the coming weeks, he will cede to his deputy a mandate acquired in 2017.
© 2020 AFP