PARIS UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

The new mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Gregoire, rides to work for his first day in office on a free Velib bike.

French political life is seldom dull. It’s a rare week when a new scandal doesn’t enliven the nightly news. Some are national. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted of corruption and until recently had to wear an ankle monitor, while Marine LePen, leader of the national right and tipped to be the next President, is under indictment and, if convicted, will not be allowed to run.

The juciest stories take place at the municipal level, where 34,000 mayors provide rich material. Back in 1982, British novelist Graham Greene, who lived in Antibes, published J’Accuse: The Dark Side of Nice, exposing how organised crime flourished in that city, protected by judicial and police corruption. Jacques Chirac, later President, drew two years suspended for appointing 21 cronies as “special advisors” while mayor of Paris. Earlier in his career, he’d been the right hand man of mayor Jean Tiberi, who too was convicted, with his wife, of a vast electoral fraud.

Not all scandals are financial. My favourite is still the regional mayor who slipped away with his secretary for a “nooner”. When his wife returned home unexpectedly, the secretary, scantily dressed, ducked out the back door and hid in the trunk of the mayor’s car – which the wife then, all unawares, drove to the supermarket… One commentator ended his account of this incident with the weary comment “Vive le sport!”

All this may help to explain why it was almost with a sigh of relief that, last Sunday, Paris elected Emmanuel Grégoire as its new mayor. M. Grégoire, who will serve for six years, was the adjoint or deputy of outgoing mayor Annie Hidalgo, the first woman to serve in that post. She in turn had been adjoint to Bertrand Delanoë, the first socialist mayor in a traditionally right-wing city (and the first to come out as gay.) Delanoë, barely known before his 2001 election, launched the campaign to reduce traffic in the city. He introduced the Vélib free bicycle service, made the buses electric, turned some streets into pedestrian precincts, created the synthetic Paris plages along the Seine in summer, and much more – all projects continued by Hidalgo, and now, presumably, to be embraced by M. Grégoire.

Reactions to the continuation of what is, in effect, a left-wing dynasty of Paris city managers has been mixed. It may be environmentally sound to ban motor vehicles, complain the critics, but what about the buses, garbage trucks and delivery vans it needs to function? Getting everyone onto bikes is fine for the young and healthy, less so for an increasingly aged population. And try balancing the week’s shopping on a set of handlebars.

M. Delanoë had a preview of this hostility back in October 2002 when he announced the first Nuits Blanches or White Nights. Shops, cinemas and museums were urged to stay open all night and pedestrians to stroll the boulevards. Delanoë himself remained at his desk, and encouraged supporters to drop in and chat – unwisely, as it turned out, since one, a sorehead who told the police he hated politicians, the Socialist Party and homosexuals, stabbed him, though fortunately not seriously. Well, you can please some of the people some of the time….