Coronavirus: the origins of tensions between the government and elected officials in Marseille

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>> In Marseille, for 48 hours, the walls shook at the end of the week.

Olivier Véran's announcements on Wednesday evening on the closing of bars and restaurants on Saturday provoked the anger of professionals in the sector, but also of local elected officials, all political tendencies combined.

On Friday, for example, the deputy mayor Samia Ghali said that the municipal police would not sanction restaurant owners who left their establishments open.

Finally, the situation led to a compromise: the closing of bars and restaurants will take place on Sunday evening to allow restaurateurs to empty their stocks.

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Guest of 

, Jacques de Saint Victor, legal historian and author of

returned on Saturday to this tension between the capital and the Marseille city.

According to him, the "revolt of the province against the central power" is not something new.

Paris and Marseille, a long history

"This was seen at the very origin of the Republic since under the revolution, there was a republican current which broke with the centralism of the Committee of Public Safety and which in 1793 was called the federalist current", explains the historian.

Moreover, Marseille was one of the cities that broke with the centralizing will of the Committee of Public Safety, to the point that the Marseille city was very violently sanctioned by the revolutionaries: for a few months, the city was renamed.

"We called it 'the town without a name' because it had revolted against the Republic," said Jacques de Saint Victor.

If popular revolts have always existed, it is quite rare, since the end of the Ancien Régime, to see elected officials lead the rebellion.

"The most famous example we have had is the Paris Commune which revolted against Versailles, which was the official government at the time," indicates Jacques de Saint Victor.

"But the conditions were special," he says. 

"France's strength was its ultra centralizing history"

Why have elected officials rebelled little since the proclamation of the Republic?

"France's strength was its ultra centralizing history", replies Jacques de Saint Victor.

But the situation is changing.

"Currently, probably because of the decentralization movement which gives more and more power to elected officials and which institutes them a bit like sort of local feudal potentates, we are seeing the birth of this somewhat new trend". 

"The local elected officials are starting to relay this antipolitics and support this movement against the elected official authority"

Especially since the Paris-Marseille opposition, already very strong in the world of football with the "Classico", is more and more present, played and analyzed in the political world.

In the South, "we use a lot of the rhetoric of saying 'the Parisian powers'," Jacques de Saint Victor recalls.

"But in reality, these are powers that were elected by the whole of the French people. And until very recently, there was this idea that the power in Paris represented the power of the whole of the people."

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Another novelty: it is no longer just the people who protest against the central power.

"It is also the local elected officials who are starting to relay this antipolitics which was born in the years 2014-2016 and who now support this movement against the elected official authority", continues the historian, citing for example the words of the mayor of 'Aix against the Minister of Health Olivier Véran.

"We are here in something quite new in the history of the Republic."

"There is a crisis of representativeness"

But this protest movement is not only French, specifies Jacques de Saint Victor.

"I even think that France arrived a little later than the other countries of Europe, in particular in Italy. But it is very clear that today, there is on the part of the people the idea that the rulers no longer represent us well enough. There is a crisis of representativeness, "continues the historian, before concluding, not very optimistic.

"It is very recent and it is a movement which, alas, will continue because more and more, we dream of a direct power of the people towards the immediate decision."