The traditional marathon of the extraordinary City Council, convened to deliberate on the dossier of the Muslim community hall project in the Plaine du Var, took place as planned and resulted in very little.
Instead of all the interventions (the time it takes for Christian Estrosi to run a real marathon!), it could have been settled with a 1-minute statement from the Mayor of Nice: “I do not want a place of prayer akin to a mosque that would be a ‘cyst’ planted in the middle of the National Interest Operation site and that could be detrimental to it.”
Voted by a majority and most likely unanimously, if he had added, “I commit to finding another solution to allow the Muslims of Nice to practice their faith in decent conditions.”
These simple words would have made the debate (oral, written, or through the press) unnecessary, unless one wanted to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the birth of playwright William Shakespeare (April 23, 1616) by drawing inspiration from his comedy “Much Ado About Nothing” in a Niçoise rewrite.
Of course, the words were finally spoken: “the technopole is not an appropriate place for a place of worship” and continuing “I commit to proposing an alternative solution to the west of the city in a short time.”
But, checking the time, it was 11:45 a.m.
If that had been the case, it would have avoided the baseless quarrels with the Prefect of Nice, who is blamed for enforcing the law (whether people like it or not) and against whom perilous legal actions are to be initiated, the requests to Tracfin to monitor the legality of funds coming from Saudi Arabia as though this watchdog cell needed a municipal resolution to exercise its mandate, which it most certainly has already done considering the amount of funds (€1.2M?), the chatter about the necessity for a technopole to have administrative and social infrastructures like nurseries (thank you for telling us because we didn’t know), and finally, evoking the idea (or ghost) that the Minister of Worship of the Saudi Kingdom (supposed owner of the En Nour association’s building) might be an instigator of Salafism (???), with Nice as the target (leaving one to wonder why such a preference in the global game).
This approach would have made the search for the person responsible for the authorization that allows the En Nour association’s room on Pontremoil Street (a case initiated in 2002, taken over in 2009 to reach the current situation) unnecessary, with the Mayor of Nice denouncing a sort of conspiracy by his former first deputy and Benoît Kandel reminding him of actions and dates with supporting administrative documents.
Christian Estrosi’s admission: “I was informed but I never validated the operation,” leaves those who know his ability to influence and control the city’s life down to the smallest detail astonished, which is admired by all and constitutes his primary quality. Moreover, concerning a case that interests his electoral district…
The fact is that the context changes, and the political situation in 2009 is not the same as in 2016, that international and national events have changed the situation, that the National Front has become a danger by playing the security card, and that a major segment of the population conflates Muslim worship and Islamism. This may explain that!
The debate between the oppositions, who criticized the behavior of the Mayor of Nice with various and diverse motivations, and his ardent defenders, who in response pulled out arguments about France’s geostrategy in the Middle East, geopolitics in relations between France and Saudi Arabia, or the tourism strategy of Nice and its region, not to mention the attractiveness of the National Interest Operation area for foreign investments, without forgetting the housing policy and social mixing, added absolutely nothing more to a deadlocked case that was voted on by a majority with contrary votes and abstentions according to the different points on the agenda.
