A week after the inglorious exit of a socialist elected official during the municipal council of Vénissieux (Rhône), the case of the “poop eaters”, as we could summarize it, was brought before the courts. Relations between local elected officials are not about to calm down. Why is the atmosphere so tense? Update on this controversy.
What are we talking about ?
To understand we have to go back to February, when the Lyon prosecutor’s office opened an investigation against the communist mayor of Vénissieux, Michèle Picard, targeted by several complaints for illegal taking of interests. These complaints were filed by opposition elected officials who suspect it of having awarded subsidies to associations led or supervised by members of the executive.
Since then, relations between local elected officials have been particularly tense. And the last municipal council was the illustration of this.
What happened at the city council meeting?
On April 8, Michèle Picard wanted to demonstrate transparency by asking her deputies, possibly concerned by an illegal taking of interests, to leave the room when voting on the granting of new subsidies. Pushed by the councilor, mocked by the Republicans, some would have had difficulty complying, starting with the socialist Jeff Ariagno who lost his cool.
According to the site LyonMag, which revealed the affair, the man came off his hinges. He is a member of the local newspaper Expressions, subsidized to the tune of 600,000 euros per year by the town hall.
“I am willing to be accused of illegal taking of interests. But I would like to be face to face, he lost his temper. It’s very easy to be suspicious. I have suspicions about certain elected representatives of the opposition, I think they eat poop. And I wish they would stop because it gives them very bad breath when they intervene here. »
What were the reactions?
A few days after this slip-up, elected official LR Aurélien Arnould filed a complaint, reveals the media Lyon Capitalspeaking of “defamatory insults” which “far exceed the limits of political debate”.
Tuesday, Quentin Taïeb, LR delegate of the 14th constituency of Rhône, asked the local socialist party to exclude Jeff Ariagno from its ranks, posting on X a short video of his intervention.
“The political debate deserves better than the rudeness coming from the majority,” he believes. “As representatives of a political party, we must all ensure that we promote exemplary behavior on the part of our members, both morally and civically,” he wrote in a letter addressed to the Federation of Socialist Party of the Rhône. The latter would have refused to exclude the elected official, indicates LyonMag.