Grandstand. Mayors of small towns, we are horrified, like all our fellow citizens, by the images that come daily from Ukraine and we will play our full part in our municipalities in the tremendous surge of solidarity being put in place. However, we do not forget that we are living through an electoral campaign for the presidential election, a high point in our democratic life.
From various political sensitivities, it would not seem acceptable to us that, despite the seriousness of the international situation, the debate does not take place and that each candidate cannot present and compare his proposals. For our part, we wanted to make our contribution to this campaign by publishing a manifesto entitled “Small towns, the beating heart of territories”. It’s not a slogan. The quinquennium that is ending has indeed seen the issue of territories come back in force.
Utilities and energy prices
Let’s not forget, the crisis of “yellow vests” started in peripheral France and the roundabouts of small towns. On this occasion, the question of public services, that of difficult month-ends and that of the price of energy were already posed with force.
After having given the impression of ignoring them at the start of his mandate, the President of the Republic has recognized the irreplaceable role of local elected officials and mayors, especially during the great national debate.
More recently, the health crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic have brutally highlighted the shortcomings of our healthcare system. We have suffered both from hypercentralized management and from a purely accounting logic that has favored the closing of hospital services for twenty years, without tackling medical desertification.
We noticed it during the previous presidential campaign in 2017, the time of “all metropolis” is coming to an end. The health crisis has accentuated a phenomenon that we could already observe, communities on a human scale are finding favor in the eyes of our fellow citizens. The digital revolution, the development of teleworking, or the price of housing in metropolitan areas, have changed the situation: it is now possible to combine quality of life and work in a small town.
With “old eyes”
Admittedly, there is a great diversity of situations, depending on the job that one exercises, and there is always, to paraphrase the director of the opinion department of the IFOP, Jérôme Fourquet, “a France of the shadows” which has suffered deindustrialization and the restructuring of public services. This France continues to suffer and must be given priority attention.
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