Paris (AFP)
The socialist mayor of Nantes, Johanna Rolland, was elected on Thursday president of France Urbaine, an association that brings together almost all of the major French cities and metropolises, dethroning the outgoing Jean-Luc Moudenc, mayor (LR) of Toulouse, with the support from LREM.
"At the end of the ballot, Johanna Rolland, mayor of Nantes and president of Nantes Métropole was elected president of France Urbaine for the 2020-2026 term," the association said on Twitter.
This victory of the socialist mayor is the fruit of the pink-green wave that swept through the big cities during the municipal elections.
Ms. Rolland, 41, was re-elected mayor of Nantes in June, six years after taking down this socialist bastion held for twenty years by former Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.
As in 2014, she made an alliance with the head of the environmentalist list.
The outgoing Mr. Moudenc, who was for a new six-year term, will be his first vice-president, also said on Twitter Cécile Dufraisse, deputy mayor of Toulouse.
The PS mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, congratulated Ms. Rolland "who will be keen to work with large cities and metropolises and who will carry our fights to the Government and Parliament", while thanking Mr. Moudenc "for these six years of work in the service of territories ".
This election gave rise to an internal battle between socialists for the nomination of their candidate.
The PS mayor of Dijon François Rebsamen explained to the newspaper Le Bien Public that he withdrew his candidacy on Wednesday, after the appointment of Ms. Rolland by the elected socialist mayors by 14 votes to 10.
According to him, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, would have tipped the scales in favor of Ms. Rolland by withdrawing her initial support.
The mayor of Dijon also evokes a meeting between environmentalists and socialists on July 21 in Tours to which he says he was not invited.
"I did not know it at the start, but I learned that during this meeting, (the ecological mayor of Grenoble) Eric Piolle asked Johanna Rolland to be candidate for the presidency of urban France on behalf of the rally de Tours ", he explained to the Burgundy daily, criticizing" the radical environmentalists ".
"Me, I am for the Christmas tree and the Tour de France," he said, referring to the controversies provoked by the environmental mayors of Lyon and Bordeaux in recent weeks.
France Urbaine brings together elected officials from large cities, towns, urban communities and metropolitan areas.
The association has 104 members for a total of 2,000 municipalities.
© 2020 AFP