He will be the candidate for Europe Ecologie-Les Verts in the 3rd district of Nice, André Minetto is running on Nice Premium a few weeks before the first round of a cantonal election he has already experienced in the 2nd district.
Nice Premium: Can you introduce yourself to our readers?
André Minetto: Doctor of Dental Surgery and Acupuncture graduate, I have been a student delegate, then a teacher at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis for 22 years. Former member of the Faculty Council of Dentistry, I have had, and still have, responsibilities in various medical professional organizations.
I was an administrator of a parents’ association (APEL Blanche de Castille) and a member of an Establishment Council in the Mont Boron district. Among other roles, I am a former treasurer of a neighborhood defense association in Riquier and a member of the board of a professional association in the Saint Roch district. I am also a member of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), and a columnist on Radio Chalom Côte d’Azur since 1994, where I created the Geostrategic Information Magazine, also addressing social, economic, societal, ecological themes or intercultural dialogue.
NP: What are the reasons for your political engagement and for the movement you adhere to?
AM: Regarding my political engagement, from high school I became passionate about current events and public affairs, but also about geostrategy and the history of civilizations. This provides a very enriching perspective and overall vision in politics. Later, I started campaigning at the age of 17, at the very beginning of my medical studies, for the causes of René Dumont, father of modern political and scientific ecology and humanistic and solidarity-based geopolitics.
I actively participated in the 1981 Presidential campaign (Brice LALONDE) and was a candidate for “Nice Écologie” in the municipal elections in 1983. In 2007, having grown children (2 daughters), I returned to my passion for politics. As Vice-Chairman of Modem06, and national leader of CAP21 (President Corinne Lepage), I resigned in October 2010 to later join the gathering born in Lyon: Europe Ecologie – les Verts (EE-LV). Being Niçois, Partit Occitan, member of Regions and Peoples in Solidarity and associated with Europe Ecologie – les Verts, immediately convinced me with their regionalist commitment and defense of our identity without rejection and excess.
NP: Do you have a background as an activist, candidate, or elected official?
AM: I was also a candidate in the cantonal elections in the 2nd district of Nice, and on a list in the 2008 municipal elections. In 2010, I refused to be on the MoDem list for the regional elections, finding the approach of Europe Ecologie much more attractive, fair, and ambitious for our country and region.
NP: Why are you a candidate in this election?
AM: I love my city, where I was born, and my district where I have lived and worked for nearly 30 years with my wife who shares the same profession. And I want to defend them from some unavowed or poorly hidden appetites and the wastefulness increasingly observed by our fellow citizens, which demobilizes or revolts them. The destruction of natural elements and the ongoing cementing or asphalting in Saint Roch and Riquier and the programmed disappearance of charming architecture, such as the Costanzo building in Riquier, with its cohort of mass-constructed buildings further worsening traffic, parking, and pollution issues, are unacceptable to me. But also the dramatic impoverishment that is spreading, increasing injustices, disappearing jobs due to poor decisions taken at the right time (see the decline of our industry over the past year), both among younger “inexperienced” individuals and adults who are callously “disposed of” past their fifties, all this outrages me and pushes me to act!
Our department has exceptional human, economic, and ecological assets. It’s time to pursue policies that match this potential, time to bring meaning back to public action and hope to citizens!
NP: What is your view on the current political situation?
AM: Our country is at an impasse due to crises in the social, human, economic, and eco-health domains, caused by incompetence, short-term vision, indifference towards public welfare, and forgetfulness of the greater interest. The prevailing financial ultra-liberalism that has spread globally and is practiced in France is a failure increasingly crushing the middle and working classes. The epidemic of chronic illnesses, such as cancer, is not due to “bad luck” but is caused by political incompetencies, coupled with a primary focus on profit that even leads to sidelining scientists when they make inconvenient discoveries for industries.
The examples of issues like chlordecone, swine flu vaccines, Mediator (which should have been banned 10 years ago), or the chronic ineffectiveness of state agencies supposedly protecting us (AFSSAPS, etc.), are merely more tragic and consequential episodes. Likewise, there are over 100,000 chemical substances used (pure substances, resulting in countless mixtures), and currently, only 278 toxicological profiles are available at the INRS (National Institute for Research and Safety for the Prevention of Occupational Accidents and Diseases), and it’s estimated that only 4,000 substances are well-known!
I am a member of the Environmental Health Network, and we are finally being taken seriously but somewhat late. Now that we’re experiencing a terrible “epidemic” of cancerous illnesses, as well as other dreadful diseases (Alzheimer’s, allergies, multiple chemical sensitivity, an “epidemic” of genital organ malformations, etc.) diminishing, abusing, mutilating, or killing too many victims, destroying the quality of life. 62.5 years is the average age limit of a quality life, and it’s very young now. This is the boundary our society must push back, not just life expectancy! And the same shortcomings are found at the departmental level.
This illustrates that an elected official, at any level, must be diligent, competent in many areas, and impeccable. They must also continually focus on the population’s welfare concretely and actively, not just before the election with beautiful words without a future. It’s an ethical issue.
NP: …and more specifically in Nice?
AM: Much like the country, Nice is managed nonsensically, burdened with debt at our expense and to the detriment of future generations who will pay dearly, in every sense of the word, for our leaders’ inconsistencies, short-sightedness, and lack of vision. We are far from the visionaries who shaped a peaceful and democratic country and Europe sixty years ago from which we still benefit. And from our respectable ancestors who thought of us long ago to preserve the Niçoise region we knew in the past. Today we are led blindly, improvisationally, with grand gestures of communication and misplaced pride. And without any local democracy. The era of “Me”, “I decided”, “I did” as if it were funded with personal money, alongside significant advertising of all kinds (Olympic Games, 2011 wishes…), is financially unbearable and unacceptable in a democracy. Especially with the results obtained.
We waste a lot. 90% of our energy is produced outside the 06 department, we export most of our waste at prohibitive prices (517 kg produced per person per year compared to the national average of 360 kg in 2009, and 12 million euros wasted per year to evacuate it 200 km away), there are almost no renewable energies, virtually no green economy which is a significant job creator, too little organic agriculture increasingly consumed… etc., etc. It’s an intolerable waste of our potentials: energetic, economic, human, scientific, ecological, agricultural (the Var Valley once nurtured us)…
Nice is also increasingly deprived of its decision-making capacity to the detriment of Paris (OIN of the Var plain…) or Marseille (Regional Health Agency…), which is set to worsen with the territorial collectivity reform-destruction, an element of creeping recentralization.
NP: Can you outline the strong ideas of your program?
AM: A positive and swift change in terms of economic and social reorientation, local democracy, global security and civility, respect for our culture, and reclaiming our self-sufficiency in areas like food, energy, and waste treatment is necessary.
I want to be a candidate who listens to citizens, who acts instead of delivering beautiful speeches in reaction to the politics of the oxymoron where the majority of elected officials say one thing and do the opposite, to clientelism, and to the elitist and anti-social system imposed by the majority in power at the General Council.
It will also be necessary to provide concrete measures:
- Re-ignite employment with the green economy (contributing to avoiding, reducing, or eliminating environmental nuisances, it is nonexistent in the Alpes Maritimes while we await the creation of 600,000 jobs in France on average over 2009-2020, mainly thanks to infrastructure projects, particularly in the construction sector) and research and development in renewable energies; dynamize our local economic fabric to recreate local jobs in crafts, commerce, organic agriculture, artistic expression…
- Develop high environmental quality housing in the city and in the middle and upper regions at attractive prices with social diversity, to bridge the catastrophic housing gap for middle and working classes, not forgetting the energy rehabilitation of old housing, social or not; help those in an intermediate situation: no right to social housing but insufficient income to rent or buy.
Organize health prevention (completely forgotten, not to be confused with screening) to improve the quality of life and reduce the harmful environment that makes us sick: air pollution from road transport while we don’t have factories, noise pollution, exposure to electromagnetic waves (relay antennas, Wi-Fi, etc.), toxic professional emissions, food loaded with substances making us sick, etc.
Improve security increasingly difficult to ensure by police officers who are less and less respected… and less numerous on the ground. Achieve results instead of “windy communication” and current colossal expenses (cameras, for example, or maintaining order during international congresses or visits by personalities), by developing community policing, prevention, opening sports facilities, and college rooms for recreational activities for neighborhood youth supervised by competent and trained adults. Avoid the impression of only seeing police to ticket minor traffic violations; there are other areas concerned with safety. For example, the safety of two-wheelers in a bicycle lane policy certainly effective along the Paillon banks notably, but sometimes dangerous in the city where unprotected lanes are difficult to use and are there to add numbers and inflate kilometers on paper!
Create activities for teenagers
There are few structures accessible to teenagers. In addition to opening schools and colleges in the evening and on weekends to make sports infrastructure available with associative supervision, we want to create spaces dedicated to them like football and/or basketball fields, neighborhood skateparks, among other street sports, and artistic activity rooms (at the Costanzo Center, or Spada Hall, or the former Peugeot premises in Saint Roch, for example), in municipal or General Council spaces.Ensure listening to citizens, public consultation, and respect for increasingly flouted local democracy in decisions taken by ONE MAN (me…) like the Riquier district recently deprived of a tram.
Respect our culture, land, and living environment, and promote the return of decisions to Nice rather than to Marseille or Paris and the possibility to “live locally”.
Implement an economically effective waste policy without serious risks to our health: source reduction through different consumption and purchasing habits in local stores of local products (less packaging, paper bags), composting, recovery rather than incineration or burning in cement factories). Follow the 2008/98/EC waste directive detailing the principles of self-sufficiency and proximity.
Help install and purchase land for young organic farmers.
Protect early childhood
For the little ones, I propose creating micro-nurseries housed in apartments belonging to the social housing stock.Eliminate waste in the budget (unnecessary or ostentatious expenses: oversized stadium for example) rather than reducing investments or funds in key areas (housing, education, prevention, etc.).
Democratize the cultural offer
The cultural offer is not sufficiently known. We are fortunate to have Spada Hall in our district. But the local artistic production must be better showcased; it is generally unknown to the residents of the neighborhoods. The example of the artist incubator located at the Spada Hall, in Saint Roch, which is open to the neighborhood and energizes it, is something to leverage in our district. Generally, as with commerce, craftsmanship, and agriculture, in culture too, local eco-consumption should be practiced.Retain the Costanzo building in Riquier after preemption by the department or the town hall and use it for our neighborhood (nursery, playroom for young people and seniors, meeting room for associations…).
Create a “shared and organic garden” in Saint Roch with an educational and recreational role for young people.
NP: What is your prognosis for March 20th and 27th?
Situated between an extreme or unabashed right and the communist party associated with the NPA and the Alternatives, my candidacy should convince and rally a good portion of the voters in the 3rd district, allowing me to be present in the second round on March 27th!
