In Marseille, a fiery debate on the reform of the voting system – Liberation

It is the only concerned who applauds. The mayor of Marseille Benoît Payan (various left) carefully follows the twists and turns of the so -called PLM bill, aimed at reforming the particular rules of the municipal ballot in force in Paris, Lyon and Marseille, to align them with ordinary law. For months that the subject has been dragging, arousing shared opinion within political partiesthe Marseillais has already made the trip to Paris several times to plead his, invariable position: a man, a voice, or « A return to ordinary law » With a direct ballot and not by sectors, as in the 36,000 other municipalities in France.

An opinion in the reverse of its Parisian counterparts and Lyonnais, who castigate a law tied in precipitation and an inappropriate calendar. The use wanting an electoral law to not change in the year preceding the election – scheduled for March 2026. « What’s complicated to do like everyone else? »their retorts the elected Marseille, who recalls that the law of 1983 establishing PLM had been passed two months before the ballot. And not in any circumstance, he recalls: the mayor of Marseille at the time, the socialist Gaston Defferre, also Minister of the Interior, had thus assured himself a division of favorable sectors allowing him to stack for a sixth mandate. « This law was made to allow someone to win by making less votesslices forty years later Benoît Payan. For French democracy, it is not glorious and we forget it … « 

The plea is drip Renaud Muselier, president (Renaissance) of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region: « It hasn’t happened since then! » And we have never challenged the election of mayors in the municipalities concerned ”castigates the great elected official. It is he who, for weeks, has been leading the southern load, even in the ranks of his party, to say all the harm he thinks of this « Electoral tampering ». A bill « Mal born, badly embarked » he lists this Tuesday again, taking up the arguments developed in a forum published in early February in the Tribune Sunday And co -signed by Martine Vassal, head of the Marseille list of the right in 2020, now also joined the presidential camp.

This posture, he also defended it with the National Renaissance Bureau, in vain. « No one agrees in the parties, nor in the cities concerned, no municipal council has been concerted, he still gets angry. Doing this at the Hussarde without treating the bottom, a year from the deadline, if it’s not tampering … and now there is a question of removing Lyon from the reform!  » MP MODEM Jean-Paul Mattei intends to deposit an amendment in this sense, due to organizational complexity. « If they come out of Lyon, let them go out Marseille! »refers Renaud Muselier, standing wind. Because according to him, the maneuver would have been launched only for the exclusive profit of « Parisians » of the presidential movement, which would expect a more favorable configuration to win the capital to the left, left to « Let Marseille die ».

In fact, the reform does not really help the affairs of the Marseille right center, confined to the opposition since the stinging defeat of 2020. The end of the vote by sectors would deprive local troops of « the baronnies effect », which had allowed the troops of Jean-Claude Gaudin to win for twenty-five years by betting only on a few pampered districts. Conversely, a voting on the city level would make Benoît Payan spring affairs, drowning in the mass the electoral ambitions of LFI, in force in two sectors of the city, and thus avoiding annoying negotiations during the election of the mayor by the hemicycle, as was the case in 2020 with the autonomous list led by ex-socialist Samia Ghali. “Each time we touch on the ballot, behind we lose. People do not understand and sanction «  still pleads Renaud Muselier, who defends himself from any municipal ambition while stirring the campaign locally for months. An Ifop survey made in mid-March for BFM and Provence Contradicted: 88 % of the Marseillais interviewed declare themselves favorable to the reform.

There is at least one point that makes Marseillais agree: the bill as written deserves to be seriously amended. Two southern socialists, the Marseille deputy Laurent Lhardit and the Aixois Marc Pena, will notably carry a amendment offering a single bulletin bringing together the names of the municipal councilors and those of districts, the current bill providing for a system with two urns. Benoît Payan, him, advocating the « Zero exception »claims that the premium granted to the list arrived in the lead, fixed at 25 % in the text submitted to the Assembly, rises to 50 % as in the other French municipalities. What further lead the debate, which was to start this evening on Tuesday, April 8 in the Assembly.