It was a label that altered the course of the last city council meeting in Nice, which took place last Friday morning at the City Hall.
Beyond the political label dividing the elected members of the Nice majority from those of the opposition into two distinct camps, it was another label, affixed to a city councilor’s microphone and promoting the withdrawal of the now “infamous” CPE, that sparked a somewhat “exceptional” city council meeting. It was expected to, as often happens, yield numerous deliberations and a few barbs thrown here and there by one or another of the council members from each camp. This little adhesive message had the power to turn a simple working session into both verbal and physical confrontations.
Label, when will you hold us?
A sorry tale of labels, then, which once again penalized the city, which is supposed to be the center of attention of all its council members combined. Instead, on Friday, the agenda of this City Council featured behaviors unworthy of a City Hall, ending with the opposition elected members leaving and proposing a gap even wider between the notorious “labels,” political this time.
A poor result that turned a workday into a crisis day. Still and always the CPE in the background providing a perfect battleground, a dance of labels accusing each other of either overly precarizing the youth, on one hand, and causing them to protest too much, on the other. What if we started by respecting this youth? It’s neither a two-year probation period nor even violence at demonstrations that will bring a concrete solution to this quest for well-being of the young and the less young for that matter.
The political divide once again showed its most detestable side in Nice, as it almost daily does on the national scene in recent weeks. Does being left or right inherently prevent any sympathy or interest for one’s political opponent?
For more details on the events that occurred during the last city council meeting, Nice Première interviewed Ms. Frédérique Grégoire, a municipal councilor of the Socialist Party and lawyer in Nice.
Nice Première: Frédérique Grégoire, what happened this morning at the City Council?
Frédérique Grégoire: It all began when my colleague, Paul CUTURELLO, had attached a small poster to his microphone that read: “WITHDRAW THE CPE.”
Jacques PEYRAT had, from the beginning of the session, asked him to remove this poster.
When Paul CUTURELLO requested the floor concerning one of the first deliberations, the Mayor notified him of his refusal to let him speak as long as the poster remained on his microphone.
Paul refused to yield to this unusual injunction. Jacques PEYRAT then got worked up and suspended the session.
It was at that moment that students who had taken seats in the city council chamber began to express their disapproval. All members of the NICE PLURIELLE group immediately decided to place similar posters on their microphones.
There was a lot of commotion; students and high school students were vocal, as were the majority members.
The mayor then went down to the aisles, tore off all the posters, and shouted “since it’s like that, I’m evacuating the room.”
Thus, the municipal police intervened forcefully, the students were shouting non-violence slogans and refused to leave; they were dragged out of the council chamber by the municipal police, with the aid of a few deputies who realized for the first time in ten years that they were also Officers of the Judicial Police…
There was quite a tussle, and some students were hit.
The members of NICE PLURIELLE intervened to allow the students to leave quietly, and these young people continued to express their dissatisfaction in “the hall of lost steps” amid the taunts of the majority members. A number of majority members took this opportunity to be heard, for the first time.
We reminded the protesters of our total solidarity and our intention, under these conditions, to definitively leave the Council session.
To calm the situation, which was becoming truly explosive, and to prevent them from being forcefully evacuated from the City Hall premises, we proposed to escort them to the street where the demonstration continued, the public members being joined by a large number of students.
Of course, Jacques PEYRAT had resumed the session; we informed him of our intention not to attend the rest of the City Council in this particularly tumultuous context.
As usual, the Mayor of Nice tried to lecture us, reproaching us, (the irony!) for engaging in petty politics!
