the candidacy of Jérôme Cahuzac for the legislative elections is debated in Villeneuve-sur-Lot

The legislative campaign in the 3rd constituency of Lot-et-Garonne is marked by the return of the former Minister of the Budget, sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud.

Four years in prison, two of which were closed for tax evasion and five years of ineligibility. This is the sentence served by Jérôme Cahuzac, François Hollande’s Budget Minister convicted in 2018 for tax fraud. Today, the former minister is returning to politics, a candidate without a label, to try to regain the mandate of deputy from which he had to resign in 2013 after the Mediapart revelations. A return variously appreciated in 3^e constituency of Lot-et-Garonne, around Villeneuve-sur-Lot.

Wearing a blue jacket and sneakers, Jérôme Cahuzac walks the market on the main street of the Castillonnès bastide town and first speaks to Nathalie. “Am I right to go back?”he asks him interrogatively. “Yes”, she replies. The memory of a deputy and a minister who facilitated achievements here is what the mayor of a small neighboring town remembers: “We like him because we remember what he was. We were happy, he did lots of things in Castillonnès, in Villeneuve.”

The comeback, however, is not a smooth road. Eliane, a left-wing voter, decides to approach the candidate. “I don’t understand that with the pans you have…”, she begins. “A pan that is large enough…”she said to him before being interrupted by Jérôme Cahuzac: “But I have paid my debt. Are you on the left? It turns out that it is people on the left who abolished the physical death penalty and it is people on the left who want to establish the social death penalty. I do not I don’t find it very coherent.”scolds the former minister.

“I don’t understand how he can represent himself. I find it immoral. At the moment, stop, it’s okay ! We want people who are spotless, who are human, that’s not possible. This temptation to cheat, finally! The trust is broken.”

Eliane, left-wing voter

at franceinfo

Which does not prevent the candidate from believing in his star, convinced that the absence of a Macronist candidate and the choice of a rebel to represent the left opens up a perspective for him: “I want to prove that we can belong to this reasonable, republican, secular left, and that we can both beat a candidate from La France insoumise in the first round, and a candidate from the National Rally in the second round.”

The visible support given to him by several local elected representatives of the Socialist Party tends to irritate the candidate of the New Popular Front, the rebellious Xavier Czapla.

“I don’t know which left it is because it turns out that there, the left came together around the program of the New Popular Front.”

Xavier Czapla, New Popular Front candidate

to franceinfo

Among the competitors in this constituency, there is also the successor of Jérôme Cahuzac at the town hall of Villeneuve-sur-Lot, the LR Guillaume Lepers: “We had as an alternative the outgoing MP who is clearly not up to the task, the Mélenchon candidate, and the return of the past. If we want to offer something for the future for this territory, I took my responsibilities and I I got involved.”

In 2022, this constituency elected Annick Cousin of the National Rally in the second round. She is counting today on the RN program, the reduction in VAT and minimum penalties to be re-elected and wants to defuse a possible “Cahuzac effect”. “He has paid his debt in terms of the money he has put aside, but he has not paid his debt morally. He will not have a political label, so he will be a free electron, certainly, but no will not have much weight in the hemicycle.”

The other candidates in the 3rd constituency of Lot-et-Garonne:

Annick Cousin (National Rally)

Xavier Czapla (New Popular Front)

Guillaume Lepers (The Republicans)

Bernadette Gasc (Workers’ struggle)