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Heads of state succeed one another. Emmanuel Macron even holds its Council of Ministers this 7 November. Why?
It is cold, it is night, the low and heavy sky weighs like a lid. We are Saturday, January 29, 2005, Nicolas Sarkozy land not at Baudelaire, but in the city of Rimbaud, Charleville-Mezieres (Ardennes). The future candidate for the presidential election, who is no longer a minister, spent two nights in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, for his first immersion trip. He even celebrated his 50th birthday. Dressed in his cashmere blue coat bought in New York "one Sunday afternoon, because, there, the shops are open", he clenched his fists. He would gladly go home, who does not like to sleep far from Paris. So why this detour for a meal dancing UMP? "I make a test of my will." The ardor of the Ardennes: after three quarters of an hour of speech, the operation is successful, and Sarkozy goes back on his plane, convinced of his foolproof motivation. He could be mistaken for General MacArthur: "I'll come back." He has already come twice, he will come back.
From this city, Emmanuel Macron, he does not know much, except his mayor. Native of the places, Boris Ravignon (LR), of two years his elder, was his "former" with the General Inspection of the finances. The head of state almost discovered the prefecture of the Ardennes in the final straight of his presidential campaign, except that the public meeting was canceled in extremis: the polls tightened, his team had preferred to concentrate his forces on the meeting of Bercy planned in the wake. He will be there Wednesday, November 7, in the middle of "roaming" – yes, we talk like this, at this moment, at the Elysee – which leads the president to tread for six days the lands of Hauts-de-France This is where the Council of Ministers will be held.
De Gaulle to Holland: the impression that the place speaks for them
We should never leave Charleville-Mézières. The presidents, at least the most recent ones, like to talk about it: while public action and the political voice both struggle to convince, they have the impression that the place speaks for them, and that is very convenient. The difficulties then arise. When a special train lays Charles de Gaulle, in April 1963, everything is still fine, only the memories are painful. During the First World War, the city housed the headquarters of the German crown prince, the last hairy died in battle fell nearby, the morning of November 11, 1918, the department was occupied for four years. The Second World War also caused immense damage. It belongs to the story. Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing will not set foot here during their presidency, any more than Jacques Chirac.
On the other hand, when François Mitterrand decided, in June 1991, once the Gulf war was over, to return to visits in the provinces, where was he going? In Charleville-Mézières. The city is changing its face, becoming a rough symbol; in short, to experience a descent into hell, accentuated by the absence of large urban centers in the vicinity. To explain the "French fractures", the geographer Christophe Guilluy wrote: "Charleville-Mézières or Saint-Dizier may be clbadified by INSEE as cities, they are not comparable to Strasbourg or Reims.The metropolitan model abandons a whole Peripheral France. […] There has been an unthought by successive governments in these territories. "The industrial crisis happened in 1966. In 1966, the merger of five town halls gave birth to the 82nd city of France, which in the name of Charleville-Mézières. , the clbadification of INSEE retrograde the town to 137th place.
Ten years after his accession to the Elysée, Mitterrand is there, in this fief of the left that he has already visited twice as first secretary of the PS. "I feel so close to those excluded and so sad that I can not always meet their demands, so much so that they themselves do not know what they're waiting for," he says. […] Let us simply remember the phenomena that announce the possibility that a society finally disappears, forgetting its own civilization. "The twilight tone of the speeches of Charleville-Mézières is given.The place will become a necessary pbadage for future presidents, when they decide to address to "France who suffers", according to the formula used by Nicolas Sarkozy in December 2006. That day, some 4,000 people listen. "The department has 280 000 inhabitants, in no other place in France it It is possible to attract such a proportion of the electorate! "Boris Ravignon, who was working for him at the time, will slid after him.
"France who suffers, who does not want to disappear, who does not want to die"
Sarkozy's speech, preceded by a photo taken in the reddening of the steel of a smithy, will be a landmark. "I came here because here it is France, the real France, the one I love, as I know it, as I feel it." France, which believes in merit and effort, France is hard to beat, France, which we never talk about because it does not complain, because it does not burn cars – it does not happen here to break what we paid so much – because it does not block trains. […] France who does not want to give up, who does not want to disappear, who does not want to die. "The candidate takes care to specify that" what[il] do not want, it is the general badistantship ", and one is struck to note the badogy of its intention with that … of Mitterrand." It is not necessary to make a society of badisted ", had said the first left-wing president of the Fifth Republic in his speech at City Hall.
Political leaders are walking on a thread, the same apparently, which returns them to their power, unless it is their powerlessness. When Sarkozy (who will be back in the corner in 2011, to defend the merits of participation and "a bonus to employees") insists on his desire to "reconcile France", François Hollande is committed to "reconcile French". Here we measure all the limits of the presidential commitments. This is his last meeting before the first round of the 2012 election that the socialist organizes in Charleville-Mézières, on the Place Ducale, and this is anything but chance. The weight of symbols, the risk of symbols, too. When Hollande will return in January 2017, he is – as it is not quite so – the naked king or queen of England. He gave up on presenting himself to his own estate so he is weakened. And with him the government parties: in the first round, Marine Le Pen comes first, ahead of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. In the second round, Emmanuel Macron totals 63% of the vote – only the result of Charleville prevents the right-wing candidate from exceeding the bar of 50% across the department. Presidents pbad, hope disappears.
This omnipresence leaves "a somewhat mixed feeling" to the mayor, Boris Ravignon: "There is a dimension that we like, the feeling of not being abandoned and the fact of benefiting from announcements from the State, such as the construction of a highway or the installation of a national agency, but it locks us into a bit of an image as we struggle to become a territory in transition. " Next year will be inaugurated a major university campus, tourism and the residential economy develop in the forceps. Now Charleville-Mezieres imagines a new destiny: to live in the present, even with fewer presidents, is tempting, no?
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