A mayor who returns his tricolor scarf following the arson of his home. A chocolate maker beaten up because of his family ties with the wife of the President of the Republic. Thousands of elected officials from all sides testify to the same thing: the insults which multiply, the threats made against them or that of their family, the degraded permanences, and sometimes the acts of violence. Not unrelated to this violence, even if it is not the only cause, let us add to this list the record number of resigning mayors – 1,293 were counted at the beginning of April – since the start of their mandate in 2020.
Despite the almost unanimous convictions following the latest violence, it is unfortunately certain that the infernal spiral of violence will not stop there. We do not see why it should, as the State is proving to be failing, incapable of condemning the authors of threats and violence with the severity nevertheless provided for by the texts.
Useful reminder: “Is punished by three years’ imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros the threat to commit a crime or an offense against persons or property made against” an elected official. In an ideal world, it would be enough for justice to work for the nightmare to end.
This serious failure of the State is added to a multitude of factors which contribute to a crisis of political vocations. Above all, we must not underestimate the gravity of the phenomenon, not that elected officials are citizens “above the lot”, but because they are the lifeblood of our democracies. However, even they seem too often to have forgotten it.
Lack of courage and populism with two bullets
By dint of internalizing their status as favorite scapegoats of our society, by dint of integrating the distrust, rejection and even hatred to which they are subjected, elected officials on all sides have ended up stretching out the stick to be beaten . The responsibilities are obviously not equal, those who made the law after the Cahuzac affair, then the majority of Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term bear an eminent responsibility for the weakening of our political class. To appease the legitimate anger engendered by the Cahuzac affair and the following ones, each and every one voted extremely salutary measures to fight against corruption and conflicts of interest. But carried away by their momentum our leaders saw fit to be zealous, throwing their richest congeners into the crowd. What is the point of making public assets that are already strictly controlled (and rightly) by the High Authority for the transparency of public life, if not to accredit the idea that elected officials are privileged, and discourage the wealthiest from taking public responsibilities? Why have reduced to three months the allowances received by deputies who have lost their mandate, when no one can reasonably think that we find a job between June and September? Why accept that our deputies have half the resources of European parliamentarians? Would they have a job half as important, or half as complex? By dint of lack of courage and two-ball populism, we have collectively lowered, degraded the political class, symbolically and materially.
And the truth is that for too long elected officials have given up the fight to defend their honor and their status in our society. How many times have I heard myself say “We have gone too far, but we can’t go back, it would be unpopular!”.
The elect have turned the other cheek too much
Of course, not all elected officials actively participated in the collapse of their status. But in their overwhelming majority, their silence and their passivity accompany, and almost seem to authorize if not hatred, at least popular contempt. Why do we find so few elected officials to stand up when a citizen treats them as corrupt living off the hooks of the taxpayer, and answer him that the elected officials are badly paid for the most part, and sacrifice their evenings and their weekends for almost nothing, if not the satisfaction of having contributed to making the lives of their fellow citizens a little easier? Why do so many elected officials lower their heads when the press, surfing on our voyeuristic tendencies, greedily comments on the price of their cars, their houses, their jewelry? Why do the deputies agree to be forced to make the law in unworthy material conditions, lacking time, with too few collaborators, too badly paid?
The elect have given way too much, turned the other cheek too much. In the interest of our democracy, it is high time that they raise their heads and assume, finally, that their vocation honors them, and that we should be proud of them and help them.