The mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, was elected, Wednesday, November 17, president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) with 62.34% of the votes in a poll attended by around 11,000 of the over 34 000 members of the organization of local elected officials. He succeeds François Baroin: the mayor Les Républicains de Troyes announced at the end of August that he would not run for a third term and had supported the candidacy of Mr. Lisnard, a member of the same party and already vice-president of the AMF .
This support had displeased the secretary general of the AMF, Philippe Laurent, UDI mayor of Sceaux, in the Paris region, who then embarked on the race and whose list obtained, Wednesday, 37.66% of the votes. Beyond the personality of the two suitors, it is two opposing ways of apprehending the relations with Emmanuel Macron that clashed: Mr. Lisnard, well anchored on the right, wants to be the guarantor of “Independent DNA” of the AMF which characterized the seven years of mandate of Mr. Baroin, while Mr. Laurent is more willing to dialogue with the executive.
“I want to tell the mayors who have made a different choice that I will also be at their service. Our association is indeed that of all the mayors of France and I will be the guarantor of this representativeness as of the independence of the AFM ”, wrote David Lisnard, in a statement from the association, published after the announcement of his victory.
The vote presented an additional element of uncertainty compared to the previous polls, the mayors being able to express themselves from a distance. The thirty-six members of the bureau and the hundred members of the management committee were also elected on a proportional basis, according to their position on the list of each of the candidates. Mr. Lisnard’s victory will not prevent cohabitation with Mr. Laurent’s list within the AMF for the next three years.
“The AMF must above all not be monopolized by a clan”
With, at his side, the irremovable André Laignel, socialist mayor of Issoudun (78 years), former minister of François Mitterrand, Mr. Lisnard had the support of the Socialist Party – with the exception of the mayor of Le Mans, Stéphane le Foll . The mayor of Cannes had incorporated environmentalists and communists into his list. The presidential majority, on the other hand, was not one of them.
The supposed proximity of its competitor to the Elysee Palace constitutes the main angle of attack of the mayor of Cannes. The mayor of Sceaux vigorously defends himself and the executive has said on several occasions that he was not at the origin of his candidacy. Before knowing the result, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said “Shocked by an instrumentalisation of mayors by LR”.
The election at the head of the AMF also created a stir within the Republicans (LR) party. The president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur region, Renaud Muselier, called on the mayors of his region to vote for Mr. Laurent, against the mayor of Cannes, launching a heavy charge against Mr. Lisnard, “Nestled in its Palais des Festivals”, “From the top of his red carpet”, while he is from the same party and the same region. “Political revenge” and “Nauseating caricature” of Cannes, lambasted the leader of the deputies LR Damien Abad. The candidate for the LR nomination Eric Ciotti, very close to Mr. Lisnard, pleaded for a “Automatic exclusion of the Macronist Muselier infiltrator”.
This election comes at the end of a five-year term marked by strong tensions between the executive and the mayors. Shortly after his arrival at the Elysee Palace, when he had announced the abolition of the housing tax, Emmanuel Macron was whistled during his first intervention at the AMF congress. The President of the Republic is to receive at the Elysée a little over a thousand mayors during a “Rather informal reception” and without speech, Wednesday afternoon, according to the presidency. The Head of State will then speak, Thursday afternoon, at the end of the congress. According to the Elysee, “He will thank the mayors for their action during the epidemic” and “Insist on supporting local authorities since the start of the five-year term”.