“Only idiots don’t change their minds”: the mayor of Lauris in Vaucluse, who announced on Monday that he wanted to resign after the attack on a deputy by a resident of his city, finally returned on his decision.
“After discussing it with the sub-prefect, we decided not to implement our announcement,” explained André Rousset, mayor of this Luberon town of around 4,000 inhabitants.
“My goal was to raise awareness”
The 72-year-old city councilor announced on Monday that he and the members of his majority group on the municipal council (23 out of 27) were going to submit their resignation to the Vaucluse prefecture. With this gesture, they wanted to react to the aggression on June 13 of one of the deputy mayors by a village resident who had asked for help after the violent storms that hit the region and his house.
The deputy had, according to André Rousset, been violently pressed against a wall and had to take refuge in his car, receiving insults and death threats in the process. On Wednesday, the prefecture of the department told AFP that it had not been “recipient of any letter of resignation from the mayor of Lauris”. “My goal was to raise awareness and make people react. And it had its effect, ”welcomed André Rousset, however.
other assaults
The announcement at the beginning of the week of his resignation was part of a context of widespread weariness among some elected officials, more and more often confronted with incivility, even sometimes with acts of violence, committed by disgruntled citizens.
In early May, the various right-wing mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins (Loire-Atlantique) Yannick Morez had resigned with a bang, questioning the “lack of state support”, after months of tension around the displacement of a reception center for asylum seekers (CADA) near a school in his town. The target of threats, particularly from the far right, the attacks against him culminated on March 22 with the burning of two vehicles in front of his home.
Consequently, the government and then the right-wing and center senatorial majority had announced the adoption of a series of measures by the end of the year to strengthen “the security of local elected officials and the protection of mayors”.