President
Emmanuel Macron
announced on Thursday more than a billion investments for Marseille, the "fractured" second city of France. "I do not come to make promises but to make commitments," said the head of state. In a speech interrupted by a storm and a sound failure, Macron, without losing his smile, promised a shower of millions that must end the
ghettos
and turn Marseille into a first-rate European metropolis.
Three days of visit accompanied by seven ministers
to define "Marseille in a big way".
Macron attacked the "emergencies" first.
In front of the traffickers, he promised "police harassment", one hundred policemen this year, two hundred the next;
a new police station (150 million euros) and
500 surveillance cameras
to be installed in the northern neighborhoods where drugs impose its law.
In addition, more means for justice because "living quietly is a right."
Second emergency, the
health one
, 169 million to renovate hospitals and another 50 for a new maternity ward.
Third, the social one, rehabilitating 10,000 homes in 15 years.
Here it fell short because 41,000 social housing applicants await a response.
In addition, the metro will be automated, four tram lines and five bus lines will be created.
But "urgencies are not enough to build the future." And that happens to recover the schools and "end absenteeism" launched Macron to the mayor. At this point a storm forced the president to ask for an umbrella and interrupt his speech. Macron proposed "to invent the school of the future." The president promised that
50 new schools and colleges,
with innovative educational projects, different learning rhythms and adjacent cultural and sports venues, will be launched next year. "If the results are positive, the project will go mainstream." An ad hoc society chaired by the mayor will deal with rehabilitating 174 schools.
The icing on the cake, various projects related to the cultural industry anchored in the cinema, such as the creation of the largest studios in the Mediterranean and a dock to shoot in the sea.
A ruined city
"Helping Marseille is
helping the whole country.
I come with a lot of ambition and a lot of humility," he said, alluding to the failures of his predecessors.
And he called for unity from local politicians whose rivalry is legendary.
So far the pluperfect future designed by Macron, now the reality ...
Marseille is a city in ruins.
In November 2018, two buildings collapsed in the heart of the city, leaving eight dead.
On July 17, three young Nigerian immigrants died in the arson of a squatted social housing block awaiting rehabilitation.
Marseille is a city corroded by drug trafficking,
where the gangs fight
to control the points of sale, installed in the blocks of the northern neighborhoods, where the police do not venture out except in planned operations.
The reckoning, solved by Kalashnikov shots,
has cost 10 lives
this summer bringing the death toll for the year to 14, more than in 2020 but far from the 2016 record when 29 people perished.
Marseille has 868,000 registered inhabitants in a municipality of 240 square km, twice that of Paris.
And two metro lines that run 35 km and date back to 1977. Lyon has 94 km of metro (and tram);
Bordeaux, 68 and Lille, 67. Not to mention that the two million Parisians have 13 metro lines.
The schools are in a dire state
.
In fact, the president visited one whose sports hall was missing several ceiling tiles.
Parents report unheated classes, rats.
A third of the 444 schools in the municipality need profound and urgent reforms.
Marseille had a right-wing mayor, Jean Claude Gaudin, for 25 years accused of dealing only with the bourgeois neighborhoods.
The Socialists ruled before with another great man, Gastón Deferre.
And they control the metropolitan government that groups two million people.
The president of the association
'Marseille in anger'
denounces that in order to receive social assistance, let alone a public job, "you have to have carried the suitcases of the party in power."
The
clientelism
or reaches the port, controlled by the once communist union (CGT).
It was the most important in the Mediterranean and today it is behind Valencia and Genoa.
Electoral territory
In the first round of the 2017 presidential elections, the far-left candidate, Jean Luc Mélenchon, won in Marseille, followed by the leader of the far-right, Marine Le Pen.
Macron, was third.
So he
has territory to win in 2022,
in which no one doubts that he will attend.
For this, candidate Macron needs, not only the money that President Macron announced, but also the window of opportunity.
This opened, paradoxically, with the victory of the left-wing coalition in the last municipal elections.
After some maneuvering, the mayoralty went to the hands of Benoît Payan, a 43-year-old socialist, the same as the head of state.
The mayor visited the Elysee on March 10 to invite the president to the World Conservation Congress, which Macron opens on Saturday, the third day of the longest visit of his term to a city.
Third ecological leg after security (police, judges) and social (transport and schools).
The opposition denounces "electoralism".
Analysts speak of "occupying the ground."
From the right, from the left and from the greens.
On that visit, the current passed between Mayor Payan and the President.
Macron has always said that "Marseille is the city of his heart".
In fact, he is an Olympique fan, as all the children he has chatted with have seen.
The mayor said that "there is no love but proofs of love," he asked for a billion for schools, and he has it.
But Macron is going to tie it short, as he announced a schedule of follow-up visits.
Payan spoke before Macron's speech to the city's elite and some guests such as OM player Payet.
He described the visit as "historical",
evoked the genealogy of the Villa, and its successive layers of refugees and emigres.
"The State must return to trust in Marseille," asked the mayor.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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