30 years ago in Toulon: the city weighed down by ideology and finance

"The first measure taken by the National Front municipality was to remove the parking spaces for elected officials in front of the town hall and replace them with flower pots," recalls former Var-matin journalist Jean-Pierre Bonicco. A symbolic decision, like the one that would later be taken to double the number of municipal police officers or to create a brigade of mounted officers in Mourillon.

For the rest, the people of Toulon will have to wait a long time for the promised changes. Jean-Marie Le Chevallier is quickly nicknamed "pothole doctor" by his opponents, who mock his inaction. Worse: the mayor had sworn to make taxes "lighter" ? These will be increased from the first budget voted. ⁽¹⁾

Outlawed, "national preference" will remain only a display of his electoral program. If the elected official is noticed, ultimately, it is above all for his FN-style excesses - "When we see the photos published in Var -matin , we wonder if we are in Toulon or Algeria," he laughs about the Sainte-Musse district. He also takes a series of ideological positions, to say the least divisive, in the field of culture or the associative world.

Aid for structures fighting exclusion was cut. The Peiresc sociocultural relay and the municipal social action center saw their budgets slashed. Tremplin, which advocated for integration through work, had to file for bankruptcy. And while the Society of Friends of Cats was credited with 40,000 francs, the Secours Populaire received five times less. Associations for veterans and pieds-noirs were much better off.

As for the planned revitalization of the local economy, it remains at a standstill. The capital of the Var region has been put on ice. Toulon no longer has a replacement at the head of state, who dreams of seeing the self-proclaimed "FN laboratory" fail. The same goes for other local authorities, political adversaries, who are turning off the tap of public money.

"We didn't inaugurate much," Didier Gestat de Garambé, former deputy mayor, admits today. "But after Trucy, the city was on the verge of bankruptcy and we mainly focused on getting it back on its feet." A 2005 report from the regional audit office on the period admits "a reduction in debt" during Jean-Marie Le Chevallier's term, which was later accentuated with the arrival of Hubert Falco at the helm.

With limited financial room for maneuver, projects are becoming rare, even if the mayor displays his "twelve labors of Hercules" in 4x3. "The building at the bottom of Cours Louis-Blanc, the Saint-Louis school group, the Porte des Oliviers, the Pont-du-Las media library and the Museum of Asian Arts were completed during this term," Amaury Navarranne, currently elected by the National Rally, is keen to point out. "And the Palais Liberté, although inaugurated by Hubert Falco, was launched under Le Chevallier." The tramway project, "revived by the FN," should have suffered the same fate, regrets Didier Gestat de Garambé, who led the project.

While the town hall's action may not disrupt the daily lives of the people of Toulon, the period is nonetheless difficult for them. "When you took a taxi in Paris, you had to avoid saying where you were from," summarizes businessman Mourad Boudjellal. "Toulon was Facholand." With this sticky label, the slightest actions of the National Front municipality will be spied on and, very often, denounced.

"If Jean-Marie Le Chevallier had an ingrown toenail, Le Monde would order two pages from me," says journalist José Lenzini, who describes a "blessed period" for his profession. Budding writers, with around ten books devoted to the capital of the Var region, are also not lacking in inspiration. Exaggerating? That's the mayor's opinion, who mocks his critics: "You see, there's always water in the port!" Left-winger Gérard Estragon believes that the National Front municipality deserved this media exposure. "They were a team of bunglers, with a Poujadist discourse. They were useless, that's all..."