The Balkanys are a soap opera. Judicial series, but not only. They hit the headlines for better and especially for worse, between the escapades and bloody bloodshed of Patrick Balkany, both in public and in their not so private life. In his report It was written, the fall of the Balkany house, the journalist Félix Séger looks back on the confrontation of “the old world of politics against the justice of the new world”. He deciphers the story of this emblematic right-wing couple, at the heart of the cogs of the RPR “cash machine” in Hauts-de-Seine. Before the broadcast of the documentary on France 5, Tuesday at 8:50 p.m., meeting with its director.
Why were you interested in the Balkany couple?
The principle of the series It was written is to tell the immediate story, a recent fact. In 2019 and 2020 it was a real headlong rush for the Balkany. At the start of the trial, you get the impression that they were the only ones who didn’t want to believe that they could be convicted, go to jail, lose the town hall. They hung on to the end. They did not see their fall coming.
It was written because for years everyone knew, even if it was not proven, that there were concerns at the level of their heritage, their tax investments. And in recent years, there is a much lower tolerance vis-à-vis elected officials of the Republic, from the point of view of justice, the police, or even voters. It was written, because they couldn’t stop.
What is new in your documentary?
We recovered from private archives, images from the 1980s and 1990s in Levallois-Perret, which were very poorly documented, especially the 1995 campaign. There is also this archive on the set of Mireille Dumas, this sentence by Patrick Balkany which joke about his infidelities in front of his wife, speaking of a single mandate and multiple mandates. It was a bit like a legend, because Patrick Balkany talks a lot and we lend him a lot of things, so it’s sometimes difficult to disentangle the true from the false. We had trouble finding this sequence which was a bit lost.
And on the testimonies, we got the word of people who had not yet spoken. There is in particular Véronique Hamayon, the magistrate who tells how she was treated and threatened by Patrick Balkany during his investigation, and who had never testified in front of the camera. We had Didier Schuller [homme politique et ami des Balkany, dont la trahison est à l’origine de leur chute lorsqu’il les a dénoncés à la justice] who had already spoken but not as much.
We also had Agnès Pottier-Dumas, the current mayor of Levallois, and her deputy David-Xavier Weiss, who were part of the Balkany team. They hadn’t spoken at the time but spoke this time. They are elected in their continuity but at the same time they mark a rupture. When you follow Isabelle Balkany’s Twitter account, it’s pretty crisp: every two days, she complains that a flowerpot has fallen or that the fountain no longer works. There is also still a misunderstanding for the Balkany of the sentences they received because they hoped to get a post, a kind of fictitious job at the town hall. Except that this is no longer possible today. In any case, they are on electronic bracelets and can leave their homes only four hours a day.
Did your interlocutors easily talk in front of the camera?
I thought it would be easier. There are very few policies in the film because it remains a complicated subject for the right. Because Patrick Balkany is friends with Nicolas Sarkozy, because he has always been there, because we saw him all the time at the UMP, and everyone knew. So it’s a little regret not to have had more words on that side. And the Balkany didn’t want to talk either. This may sound surprising as they talk a lot in the media, but only when it is to their advantage. They don’t do contradictory or long reporting. Isabelle Balkany preferred to speak at Hanouna’s.
Could such a couple exist in French politics today?
No, and besides, they are quite unique. They are complementary. They are better known than certain ministers of the Fifth Republic, while they have never had a leading role and that they remain local elected officials of Levallois-Perret. But everyone has pictures of this couple.
There is this expression that stuck and that they hate, “head and legs”, that is to say that she was the thinking head and he was the facade. She takes care of communication, and his role is to go see everyone, to shake hands. He is unable to be organized, to write, to keep a journal, but he is comfortable going to talk to a little granny in the market. While she stood for election, she was elected to the departmental council, but she lost her other elections because as soon as she went into contact with people, things were not going well. It does not have this “political thing” that Patrick Balkany has. Or she is forcing herself and it is not natural. She was the buffer with the media. There were communication officers in Levallois but if we wanted an interview with Patrick Balkany, she had to be contacted directly because everything went through her. Moreover, if they had separated in 1996-1997, neither would have continued the policy. One without the other, it was impossible. There is a real story between the two, they were always together in town hall and in life. They hit the headlines together, in every possible way.
Do they still have an influence or a political career ahead of them?
No today it’s totally over. They are old, they are not very healthy. It seems quite hallucinating and anachronistic to say to yourself that the Balkanys were still in office until 2019 and that they still thought to run in 2020 to start again on a 6-year term, knowing that everyone knew. They are anyway under electronic bracelet and ineligible. They are not going to come back to 80, and anyway if they had an influence it would only be in Levallois-Perret. But I think people understood it was over.