They no longer support the discredit cast on local elected officials. The twelve mayors of the community of communes of Pays des Abers (CPA) presented themselves united to the press on Thursday evening before their office meeting. Welded around one of their own, their president Jean-François Tréguer. Three days earlier, the mayor of Lannilis was fined for illegal taking of interests. In question, the vote of a community deliberation two years ago, when he should have legally abstained and left the room.
For these elected officials, the reason is far from worth such opprobrium. “In the minds of people there is condemnation therefore guilty, assures Christine Chevalier, mayor of Landéda. The shortcut is quickly made, necessarily everyone thinks of personal enrichment, when this is not the case at all. It’s really very worrying for our local democracy.”
A misdemeanor?
Dominique Cap, president of the association of mayors of Finistère (AMF29), experienced this “humiliation” last October. If the city councilor of Plougastel-Daoulas notes that the court of Brest clearly has a more rigid interpretation of the texts than other jurisdictions, he considers that it is up to the legislator to take up the subject in order to provide a better framework for the definition of illegal taking of interests, an offense that Dominique Cap now considers misguided.
Violence against elected officials
First vice-president of the AMF29, Viviane Godebert has been mayor of Locmaria-Plouzané for twenty years. She sees in this multiplication of condemnations “A real violence against elected officials. The elected official is no longer respected. Our inhabitants must understand that the function has become dangerous. Now, you have to be a lawyer, in the smallest details, you have to be very careful”. Everyone wonders: can a mayor, for example, vote a grant to a football club where his child plays, without being worried?
They also believe that this threat of legal action may push some to throw in the towel while in Finistère, between 2014 and 2020, 800 elected officials resigned before the end of their term. This is nearly 15% of the workforce.