How many Parisians will vote for a consultation whose result the socialist elected representative has promised to follow, while she leans against?

Out of 1.3 million registered voters, the turnout remains the great unknown, a marathon Sunday in the streets of the capital and after a month of March marked by demonstrations and the pile of uncollected garbage cans.

"It doesn't matter how many," Hidalgo told AFP. The "tools of participatory democracy improve by using them", she argues, recalling that the participatory budget, marker of her first mandate, had attracted in 2014 only 40,000 voters, against 215,000 in 2022.

"Anything that can allow democracy, dialogue, consultation, is better than blockages and withdrawals," says the mayor.

But "with the news, the demonstrations against the pension reform", a collaborator of the City Hall has "no more illusions about the participation rate".

The town hall indicates that 1,270 agents will be on the bridge all day. The budget, "we will know later," Anne Hidalgo told AFP.

In its majority, the malaise is palpable: its communist and ecologist allies have not hidden their lack of enthusiasm vis-à-vis his initiative, announced mid-January after an ultimatum to the operators.

"Minor" topic

"We have other topics to explore," said communist Nicolas Bonnet-Oulaldj, citing rentals on the Airbnb platform, a subject on which Anne Hidalgo had pledged to organize a referendum after the municipal elections of 2020.

And while the EELV deputy for mobility, David Belliard, wanted to chase the 15,000 scooters without protocol, he finds himself campaigning "against", while another figure of the party, MEP Karima Delli, has called for saving the scooters.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo in her office, March 28, 2023 © JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP

The consultations must "focus on major subjects" and not a "minor" subject, tackles the mayor LR of the sixth arrondissement Jean-Pierre Lecoq, for whom "the Parisian executive seeks only to validate by a vote a decision he has already taken but that he does not want to assume alone."

Hence the position of the right-wing opposition not to call for a vote. "The higher the abstention, the more Parisians will mark their indifference to this coup de com' of Anne Hidalgo," assumes the group LR and related.

The Insoumise Laurent Sorel militates for the ban but anticipates a "farce" in view of "the botched organization of this consultation", with "a few posters here and there and timid information meetings".

"Non-campaign"

For the only left-wing opponent of the city council, who denounces "a political maneuver" of Anne Hidalgo, this "non-campaign" serves first of all Clément Beaune, who "takes advantage of it to make the presidential party exist in the capital".

Wednesday, the Minister of Transport, who is believed to have the ambition to delight the town hall in 2026, announced a plan to regulate the use of scooters, regretting in passing "that we have caricatured and simplified this debate".

Vote on Sunday "for or against self-service scooters" in Paris © KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP/Archives

"There is zero information, the arguments could not be expressed, there is only one polling station per district. I regret that this subject is binary," said the minister, who has "not many doubts about the outcome of this referendum."

Condemned, the three operators with a young clientele? They who have demanded, in vain, electronic voting for this election point out that only 33% of 18-24 year olds "have already heard of voting", against "77% of 50-64 year olds and 90% of 65 years and over", according to a Harris Interactive poll.

On the other hand, they are the only ones to have really mobilized, including with contested methods: race offered Sunday to vote, paid influencers on social networks ...

"There have already been surprises in elections," said Erwann Le Page, director of public affairs at Tier, one of the operators.

© 2023 AFP