“I hope they continue working in their delegations. » At 7:41 p.m. on Thursday, October 31, the mayor of the UDI of Rognac (Bouches-du-Rhône), Sylvie Miceli-Houdais, closes the last municipal council of her abbreviated mandate with her smoky voice. Upstairs, in the town hall of this town of 12,000 inhabitants, the atmosphere is deadly. That night, only a handful of loyal and unloquacious elected officials (14 of the 35 on the initial list) remained to vote in the final deliberations. The seat of Senator Stéphane Le Rudulier (Les Républicains, LR), still a member of the majority, is empty.
In August, after the resignation of three new elected officials, the prefecture confirmed the deficiency of the municipal assembly, which had lost a third of its councilors. And he scheduled partial elections for November 17 and 24. It is difficult to imagine such a failure in March 2020, when the outgoing Stéphane Le Rudulier triumphed in the first round with 90.49% of the votes. At that time, he was not yet that media senator and addicted to social networks, who gravitated around Gérald Darmanin, after having been close to Eric Ciotti and then Bruno Retailleau. His list, “Rognac, our city, my passion,” brought together a coalition that reached even the communists. “He brought everyone together. “We were alone in front.” recalls Noré Boudissa, the only elected official of the opposition.
Four years later, the scene takes a turn. If Noré Boudissa returns to the head of a left-wing citizen union, four other lists will compete, including that of the National Rally (RN) and that of the outgoing mayor, Sylvie Miceli-Houdais. Promoted by Stéphane Le Rudulier, elected member of the Senate in December 2020, the former first deputy saw her majority lose her supporters one by one, in a context of personal disagreements and revelations of the worldof November 2023, and other newspapers about his brutal governing methods and those of his predecessor. In May 2024, the information site. Marsactu.fr reveals that a complainant sent a file to the courts regarding the improper use of the municipal purchasing card, which led to the opening of a preliminary investigation by the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor’s office. Since then, the mayor tried to fire the official, before being prevented from doing so on October 16 by a decision of the administrative court.
Sylvie Miceli-Houdais dismisses the accusations against her and considers it a success that justice “he didn’t give him any sign of life”. she says she doesn’t have “I hesitated for a second [s]we represent ». “I have a record to defend and I see in this partial the opportunity to recover my legitimacy through the polls,” she projects.
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