In Reunion, elected officers face the legacy of figures of the previous | EUROtoday

“It’s bad. » Despite diabetes and fatigue due to heart disease, Jean-Paul Virapoullé has retained his taste for scathing formulas. In his vast Creole house in Saint-André, in the east of Reunion Island, surrounded by Indian furniture in dark wood, which recalls the Malabar coast, where his ancestors came from, the octogenarian, tutelary figure of the right local, scolds the new generation of Reunionese politicians.

The former centrist parliamentarian, political heir to Prime Minister Michel Debré (1912-1996), who was also a member of Parliament for Réunion between 1963 and 1988, is saddened when reading the region’s budgetary guidelines for 2025. “There are no more major projects”he asserts. His opponent, Huguette Bello, 74 years outdated, present president (numerous left) of the neighborhood? “An empty container. » Didier Robert, 60, who should have taken over the leadership of the right pei (the local right, in Creole)? “He ruined everything. He’s not a leader. »

The legacy of those that carried Reunion within the wake of the departmentalization of 1946 is, clearly, not simple to imagine. Whether, on the proper, it’s Michel Debré, father of the V^e Republic and trustworthy minister of General de Gaulle; of Jean-Paul Virapoullé, who had refused to vote for the censure of Michel Rocard, regardless of the directions of the UDF, and who was the writer, in 2003, of the modification which mounted the standing of the island within the Republic; or Pierre Lagougue (1921-1998), elected official who gave his title to a number of excessive colleges on the island. But additionally, on the left, of Paul Vergès (1925-2016), the highly effective and authoritarian boss of a long-autonomous Reunion Communist Party (PCR), at all times a reference.

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