Until when can he hold on to his post as mayor, he who dealt “a terrible stab in Saint-Etienne” according to the words of Jean-Jacques Rey, a local entrepreneur who participated in the life municipal policy until 2014? The man is sorry for “the miserable affair, very low-end” which has been agitating his city for three months.
Fueled by the recent failed attempt by the mayor of Saint-Etienne, Gaël Perdriau, to block a Mediapart publication and by the announcement by Laurent Wauquiez (LR) of a complaint for “defamation”, the sextape blackmail case arouses bitterness and divisions.
“We feel anger to have elected officials capable of doing such crap,” exclaims another business leader met at the market. “For Saint-Etienne, this should be quickly settled by the courts and by the people concerned,” said this fifty-year-old, refusing to give his name.
The magistrates of Lyon are working in the greatest discretion on the judicial investigation for “blackmail” opened at the end of August after a complaint from the former first municipal deputy of Gaël Perdriau, Gilles Artigues, who accuses the mayor by name of having trapped him with a video where we see him being massaged by an escort boy in a hotel room.
Gaël Perdriau, he repeated this week before his municipal council that he intended to remain in office even in the event of an indictment, citing the presumption of innocence. But he seems more and more isolated, since his exclusion from LR.
In recent days, calls for resignation have rocketed in the ranks of his opposition (Socialists, LFI, PCF and Greens), but also within his majority. Some of his traditional supporters are beginning to drop him, others are silent, few are those who express their support.
Crisis meeting
The first salvos came from the three candidates for the presidency of LR, Bruno Retailleau, Aurélien Pradié and Eric Ciotti. Followed a virulent press release signed by 25 elected officials from the Loire. An initiative led by the president of the regional council LR Laurent Wauquiez, according to several sources.
This text affirms that Gaël Perdriau, also president of the metropolis of Saint-Etienne, “has definitively sunk into infamy and shame” and “must leave his mandates as soon as possible”. Among the signatories, four deputies (three LRs, one Renaissance), four senators (two LRs, one PCF, one PS), the LR president of the Loire departmental council, mayors and presidents of intercommunalities, as well as almost all regional councilors elected on the Wauquiez list.
In the process, seven of the 47 municipal councilors on the Perdriau list again called on the mayor “in a sense of responsibility”, after having released him in September. “After all the revelations concerning him, each more appalling than the next, is he still credible to defend the interests of our city? “says their press release.
The revolt also rumbles among several mayors who sit in the metropolis of Saint-Etienne, while the metropolitan council is to meet on Thursday (53 municipalities, 123 councillors, 405,000 inhabitants).
“It’s getting unbearable”
A crisis meeting of the metropolitan executive will be held on Monday at the request of the two communist vice-presidents – the mayors of Unieux Christophe Faverjon and Rive-de-Gier Vincent Bony – in connection with “the new elements that have emerged this week “, with the referral of Mediapart and the complaint of Laurent Wauquiez.
Hervé Reynaud, the LR mayor of Saint-Chamond and first vice-president of the metropolis, demands a “clarification of governance”. Otherwise, he will refuse to chair the metropolitan council again, as he did at the end of September when Gaël Perdriau stepped down from his representative duties.
“On the institutional level it becomes untenable (…) Gaël Perdriau will surely be outvoted because many resentments and enmities reappear, the atmosphere is leaden, outside we are the laughing stock of everyone”, a-t -he says.
“The political status quo seems difficult but there are few alternatives because there is no other natural leader who emerges”, worries for his part Vincent Joffre, the president of “My party Saint-Etienne », the association supporting the action of the mayor. According to him, “new elections could change the situation” by benefiting the left.