Above all, no gazelle modesty. Hugues Moutouh, who begins his new role as prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes this Monday, October 9, is not out of his depth. We remember his famous “Deux slaps et au lit” during the June riots and the outraged reactions of the left: the first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure, for example, was indignant that a “prefect advocates the culture of violence to combat violence. Sanction Moutouh? It was quite the opposite. Because what we know less is that Hugues Moutouh, who was technical advisor to Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée and advisor to Claude Guéant at Beauvau, who has known the current Minister of Interior Gérald Darmanin – so many clues suggesting a slight inclination to the right… -, maintains a unique relationship with Emmanuel Macron. Who without hesitation validated Darmanin’s proposal to appoint Moutouh prefect in the Alpes-Maritimes.
October 8, 2021, 11 p.m. The president finishes his speech at the Africa-France summit in Montpellier. He has just brought together hundreds of entrepreneurs, students, artists, athletes and researchers to discuss youth, without heads of state – apart from him, therefore – and without institutional authority. Direction the airport, where the Falcon is waiting to return to Paris. He gets into his car and sits next to the prefect of Hérault, the famous Hugues Moutouh. Fasten your seat belts, the two men then speak directly to each other. The OQTF (Obligation to leave French territory) figures are still too low, the problems of deportations to the border, the number of people claiming asylum, the nationalities of applicants for the first residence permit, foreigners in an irregular situation, and even the date of reopening of an administrative detention center whose work has fallen behind schedule: Emmanuel Macron bombards his interlocutor with sensitive questions.
Then he changes the subject and becomes interested in drug trafficking. He wants to know the number of deal points, the nature of the trafficking, small thugs or organized gangs, the nature of the settling of scores, the number of arrests. The journey lasts 25 minutes, he has one last question. Since the law on separatism was promulgated on August 24, 2021, he has sought to measure how it applies on the ground: is it making it easier to control the financing of religions?
A department where politics lurks at every street corner
Gérald Darmanin often says that Emmanuel Macron, during working meetings on security or immigration, is not the last to be cash and firm – much more so than certain Macronist ministers. The Head of State’s exchanges with Hugues Moutouh are also there to bear witness to this. The president has confidence with this interlocutor, the same one who, then prefect of Drôme, filed a complaint after the slap received by the president in Valence in June 2021. A few weeks later, Emmanuel Macron is in Béziers and continues the conversation with the prefect as if it had stopped the day before.
Here is now Hugues Moutouh in the Alpes-Maritimes, a department in which questions of security and immigration – the Franco-Italian border is currently the subject of much attention – are particularly sensitive. A department, too, where politics lurks at every street corner. His appointment was welcomed by the mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, opponent of the president, as well as by the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, ex-Sarkozyst turned Macronist, by the president of the general council, Eric Ciotti, who is also the boss of LR, as by the regional president Renaud Muselier, now a member of the presidential majority. Consensual mouth? For his installation ceremony this Monday morning, he reluctantly unleashed a war of clichés: on social networks, Christian Estrosi showed himself to his right; on the other side was Eric Ciotti, but in the photo, we couldn’t see him…