in Saint-Etienne, the left hopes to reconquer the city corridor after the autumn of Gaël Perdriau | EUROtoday

In the streets of downtown Saint-Etienne that day, the rain streamed repeatedly alongside closed doorways, lowered iron curtains and pale tags. Régis Juanico, candidate of the left (excluding La France insoumise, LFI) for city corridor, makes an attempt to make a breakthrough in the direction of a market the place a handful of activists shivering within the chilly await him. But, at 11:45 a.m., merchants are already repacking their items. No have to persist, the folks of Stéphane stayed at dwelling. We retreat to the candidate’s marketing campaign premises, a youngster is drying his leaflets on a big assembly desk. The socialist, former deputy for the Loire (2007-2022), seems assured.

Because one factor is definite, many of the metropolis’s 173,000 inhabitants usually are not mourning their former mayor Gaël Perdriau (ex-Les Républicains, LR). Elected in 2014, he has been incarcerated since January 7. He was dismissed from his put up on 1^er December 2025, following his conviction to 5 years in jail and 5 years of ineligibility for “blackmail”, “criminal conspiracy” and “embezzlement of public funds”, one of many heaviest sentences ever handed down in opposition to a mayor in workplace beneath the V^e Republic. A harsh judgment reflecting a really murky affair, the place the city corridor was for a number of years the scene of sordid intercourse tape blackmail fomented on the highest stage in opposition to the previous first deputy Gilles Artigues, and for which the mayor, the primary defendant, is interesting.

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