The inauguration tour continues for Robert Injey, who was yesterday at a place he knows well: The Communal Palace located on Saint-François Square in Old Nice. His goal: To turn it into a Citizens’ Observatory…
“This building, which returned to the city in 2009, is abandoned and there is a risk of imminent danger. It is probably to ‘cover themselves’ that the city has hastily issued a building permit that is limited to facade maintenance and roof repairs, whereas there is an urgent need to engage in a true rehabilitation. Far from speeches, this situation reflects the outgoing mayor’s disdain for anything not related to the Promenade des Anglais…,” declared the Left Front candidate.
For his part, he has much more ambitious plans for this building, in line with what it represents.
“As the seat of communal power, the seat of the workers’ counter-power against the employers, our ambition is to make this building the symbol of power restored to citizens. It is here that we wish to establish the headquarters of a structure we want to set up: the Citizens’ Observatory,” explains Robert Injey.
“There is no democracy without control. Today, the word of citizens is confiscated in favor of ‘expert expression’ whose independence is quite relative.” In addition to the role of the municipal council and the Neighborhood Citizens Councils he wishes to establish, he also proposes the creation of a Citizens’ Observatory.
This structure, composed of about a hundred citizens, will be completely independent of the municipality. The composition of this Observatory will be determined every four years through a lottery based on representative configurations (gender parity, neighborhoods, age, etc.), and the members of this Observatory will benefit from training useful for carrying out their mission.
The Observatory will be empowered to monitor and audit elected officials on the progress and fulfillment of commitments made by the City’s Assizes, control the budget, public authorities, and Public Service Delegations (PSD). It will report its findings every two years at the City’s Assizes.
“The importance of the Observatory in returning power to citizens, promoting transparency, and allowing everyone to take ownership of ‘Politics’ requires giving it a real place in the city. And what place more appropriate than this building, which for over four centuries was alternately the Communal Palace and Labor Exchange?” concludes the leader of the “Putting People First” list in the Nice municipal elections.
