“My goal was to raise awareness”: the mayor of Lauris will not finally resign after the aggression of a deputy

New twist in Lauris, commune of Vaucluse. “After discussing it with the sub-prefect, we decided not to implement our announcement,” explained André Rousset, mayor of this Luberon town of around 4,000 inhabitants.

On Wednesday, the prefecture of the department told AFP that it had not been “recipient of any letter of resignation from the mayor of Lauris”. “My goal was to raise awareness and make people react. And it had its effect, ”welcomed André Rousset, however.

The page of violence on elected officials far from being turned

The 72-year-old city councilor announced on Monday that he and the members of his majority group on the city council (23 out of 27) were going submit their resignation at the prefecture of Vaucluse. By this gesture, he wanted to react to the attack on June 13 of one of the deputy mayors by a village resident who had asked for help after the violent storms that hit the region and his house.

The deputy had, according to Andre Roussetwas violently pressed against a wall and had to take refuge in his car, receiving insults and death threats in the process.

The announcement at the beginning of the week of his resignation was part of a context of widespread weariness among certain elected officials, more and more often faced with incivilitieseven sometimes to acts of violence, committed by dissatisfied citizens.

At the beginning of May, the various right-wing mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins (Loire-Atlantique) Yannick Morez had resigned with a bang, questioning the “lack of state support”, after months of tension around the relocation of a reception center for asylum seekers (CADA) near a school in his town.

The target of threats, particularly from the extreme right, the attacks against him culminated on March 22 with the fire of two vehicles in front of his home. Consequently, the government and then the senatorial majority on the right and center had announced the adoption of a series of measures by the end of the year to strengthen “the security of local elected officials and the protection of mayors”.