The dispute between Marie-Christine Arnautu and Marc-André Domergue, opposed to Gaël Nofri and his colleagues elected to the Municipal Council regarding the use of the Bleu Marine logo, ends with the latter’s decision to renounce using this name.
The new group will be called: Independent Elected Officials of Nice (ENI).
However, the disagreement between the two groups remains very present, as can be seen from the tenor of the statements explaining this decision.
The option of returning to the starting point with the reunification of the two groups has been definitively abandoned, at least apparently.
In politics, and not only in politics, never say “never…”
Communiqué from the Independent Elected Officials of Nice group (formerly Nice Bleu Marine):
It is not without a certain bitterness that we have decided to change the name of the group Nice Bleu Marine. The FN-RBM thus loses any chance of having a group on the municipal council of France’s 5th largest city.
Although we are both legally and morally within our rights, our decision results from the realization of Madame Marie-Christine Arnautu’s obstinacy in opposing our desire for conciliation and using her positions in Paris to deceitfully convince the FN-RBM authorities that the elected officials from Nice are traitors.
However, we remind you that this is not the case. Loyal to the campaign promises and values defended in front of the voters of Nice, our group maintains the positions deserted by Ms. Arnautu since her election: in the field where she does not come, in the city’s external commissions and bodies where she has chosen not to sit, on important cases like the Pasteur prison where she has reneged.
Contrary to her commitments, the parachuted candidate never intended to leave Paris to land in Nice: she only wishes to come on council days. Due to her almost permanent absence from the Metropolitan Bureau, socialists have been elected in our place in many external bodies dealing with security, employment, and the development of the Plaine du Var… Our voters are the ones harmed here, they are the ones whose voice should have been carried and who will be deprived of a spokesperson in these bodies for six years. Ms. Arnautu’s Nice mandate seems to have been merely a pretext to justify her candidacy for the European elections in the South-East. She thus reproduces everything we denounce in system politicians: accumulation of positions and contempt for voters.
The mere acknowledgment of these facts led to a democratic vote of the Nice Bleu Marine elected officials who did not wish to appoint Ms. Arnautu at the head of their group, preferring the election, unanimously by the six members present, of Guillaume Aral.
We could have given in and overlooked the interest of Nice and the people of Nice out of ambition or personal calculation. But it is not our personal interest that we defend, it is the honor of the voters of Nice who voted for a list whose name was resolutely Niçois. Our commitment to serving the people of Nice now continues with independence of mind and loyalty to patriotic values within an “Independent Elected Officials of Nice Group”.
