Just after the June 2012 legislative elections I had a post on “deputies of diversity“: of the six new Maghrebi/Muslim/African-origin deputies elected to the National Assembly—all PS—, the first-ever to issue from post-colonial immigrant communities. One of the noteworthy stories of last month’s municipal elections—but which went absolutely, totally unreported in the national media, including in newspapers like Le Monde (in their hard copy, at least)—was the first-ever election of a mayor of Maghrebi/Muslim origin in a municipality of over 30,000 inhabitants in metropolitan France: Azzédine Taïbi, age 49 and of Algerian immigrant parents, who was elected mayor of Stains—a commune in the heart of the Seine-Saint-Denis (le neuf-trois)—on the PCF-headed Front de Gauche list. This is not an insignificant event IMO, but which the media did not bother to report—and with Taïbi and his party engaging in no publicity on it, as if the first-ever election of a mayor of Maghrebi/Muslim origin in metropolitan France were such a banal event—which it is not—as not to be worthy of particular mention (except in online only dispatches).
One should mention, for the record, the election last month of Algerian-origin Samia Ghali as mayor of Marseille’s 8th sector, though this only counts somewhat, as mayors of Marseille sectors, which group two arrondissements each, are, in effect, sub-mayors and with limited powers (like mayors of Paris arrondissements). And when it comes to “diversity” mayors, I do not count Rachida Dati, who was re-elected mayor of Paris’s upper bourgeois 7th arrondissement (Eiffel Tower, Invalides, Rodin Museum…). Pour mémoire, in the 2008 municipal elections Mme Dati was—at President Sarkozy’s instructions—parachuted into the 7th—where, needless to say, she had no roots whatever—as head of the UMP list; and as the 7th is as safe for the right/UMP as one can get, there was not a chance she was going to lose.
In smaller communes, the Muslim/Mauritanian-origin Marieme Tamata-Varin was elected mayor of Yèbles (pop. 700) in the Seine-et-Marne and fils de harki Mohand Hamoumou was re-elected mayor of Volvic (pop. 4,000), of mineral water fame, in the Puy-de-Dôme (pour l’info, the published version of Hamoumou’s doctoral thesis—his directrice de thèse having been the prominent sociologist Dominique Schnapper—was one of the first academic studies of the Harkis—and which I thought was quite good when I read it some two decades back—though I recall him advancing the absurdly exaggerated figure of 150,000 Harkis killed by the FLN after Algeria’s independence).
All in all, the number of conseillers municipaux of non-European immigrant origin, according to La Gazette.fr, went from 1,069 to 2,343 in this election, i.e. 6.7% of the total. That is not an insignificant increase. L’intégration est en marche.
One rising “diversity” politician of note is Karim Zéribi, an EELV MEP from Marseille, whom I’ve been hearing about off and on since the late ’90s, when he was a chevènementiste—he’s made the rounds of the parties of the left—and up-and-coming Marseillais politician of Maghrebi (Algerian) origin, though who has yet to acquire a national reputation. Two nights ago he was interviewed sur le plateau on the Europe Hebdo news magazine of LCP/Public Sénat (French C-SPAN)—watch here (I love his Midi de la France accent)—on the negotiations underway between the EU and USA over the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership/Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TTIP/TAFTA), which Zéribi argues would be terrible for Europe. He was good. And quite certainly correct in his critique of the process, as there is no way that the US government (and Congress) will ever agree to such a deal if it does not enhance the position of US corporate interests, which are in contradiction with those of European consumers and states on numerous points (for more on this all-important issue, see this article by the redoubtable Lori Wallach—whom I’ve previously discussed—in the December 2013 Le Monde Diplomatique; et en français ici). One can only wish Zéribi well in his campaign against the TTIP/TAFTA in the European parliament and hope that he gains stature in the coming years.
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