Seriously, drawn features, Benoît Payan advances towards the line of cameras and journalists. At his side, Admiral Lionel Mathieu of the battalion of Marseille firefighters (BMPM), remains silent. This Tuesday, April 11, three days after the collapse of several buildings on rue de Tivoli, the mayor of Marseille continues to assume his role as head of search and rescue operations, as provided for in his status as director of the BMPM. He details in front of an audience of journalists the progress of the operations, the means committed, the difficulties encountered.
A “communication orchestrated to the millimeter”, observes Lionel Royer-Perreaut. The mayor of the 6th and 8th arrondissements of Marseille and Renaissance deputy believes that this was coupled with a “political orchestration” of the event. It would have aimed to fill a “lack of legitimacy” that Benoît Payan would drag since his accession to the head of the city after the resignation of Michèle Rubirola, who was the head of the Printemps Marseillais list at the time of the municipal campaign.
“It’s part of the political game”
“This lack of legitimacy leads to a lack of credibility and it is moreover because he understood this that his management of the rue de Tivoli was so important and crucial. This is part of the political game, I understand it perfectly, ”continues the municipal opponent. This is how we were able to see the city councilor discussing at length with residents and merchants of the district. To see him walk away, visibly annoyed, from a press briefing during which Olivier Klein, the Minister of Housing, announced the discovery of a fourth body under the rubble.
From Sunday, a sequence also did not fail to initiate a storm in a glass of water still shrouded in sadness: descended in disaster from Lorient where he was spending his weekend, Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, s t was seen by the town hall to oppose his request to organize a filmed sequence “as close as possible to the rubble”. “We also had in his vocabulary a form of permanent possessiveness – ”my city”, ”my inhabitants”, ”I got the Marseille plan on a large scale”-, we can clearly see from this that this fight for legitimacy is a permanent fight”, continues Lionel Royer-Perreaut. “A bad trial” for Yannick Ohanessian, Deputy Mayor in charge of Security. “We had to get organized very quickly and it’s not something we thought about,” he adds.
The disaster claimed the lives of eight Marseillais and Marseillaises. During this sequence, a tragedy of national scope, Benoît Payan and his municipal team will therefore have spared no effort: the town hall is relocated to the Roosevelt school, where camp beds are installed. The mayor, his deputies, his cabinet, his communication team, the municipal employees will ensure an intense and 24-hour on-site presence. And Benoît Payan, whose face is rather unknown to laymen of politics, thus took on a little more depth at the end of the drama of Tivoli which therefore saw him being continuously on all fronts: media, politics, with relief and for more than five days put on the costume of “captain” of operations. “Today more than yesterday, Benoît Payan has this recognition, that of knowing how to manage crises and day-to-day life at the same time. He is more and more the man for the job,” adds Yannick Ohanessian.
“No one can dispute his legitimacy”
Mohammed Bensaada, LFI activist and unsuccessful candidate for deputy in one of the two constituencies in the northern districts, will not contradict Yannick Ohanessian. While relations between LFI and Printemps Marseillais have been very tense, “no one today can dispute its legitimacy. He is the only mayor on board, the only mayor of Marseille, ”he believes. “Between the municipal elections of 2020 and April 2023, a lot has happened. We were leaving the Hollande mandate [qui vient du PS tout comme Benoît Payan à l’époque]. In the meantime there have been acts, ”welcomes the Insoumis again.
The rue de Tivoli was inevitably reminiscent of the rue d’Aubagne. In 2018, the collapse of two unsanitary buildings also killed eight people. This drama was one of the strong axes of the conquest of the town hall of Marseille by the Payan team. The management of the hell of Tivoli therefore took on a strong symbolic charge for the municipal team, a mark not to be missed. In addition to the obvious and first need to support the victims.
“I had an agreement with Michel [Rubirola] but not with Benoît [Payan] and if I did, it was because I had no doubts about his ability. I did not wait for the rue de Tivoli, which, unfortunately, only highlighted what he is: Benoît Payan has the charisma of the function”, advances for his part Samia Ghali.
Between the Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and its Marseille refugees or, more recently, the drama of the rue de Tivoli, Benoît Payan will have had, as his entourage often mentions, “a crisis mandate” “And it t is in the worst that we unfortunately show the best”, advances Samia Ghali, before concluding: “it is with use that one becomes mayor, a title does not make the man. Today, this lawsuit for legitimacy has fallen”.