“We have to wake up the city without the startle.” Pronounced the day after his surprise victory in municipal elections in Tours, in 1995, the little phrase has long been both office program and profession of faith. For in this quiet city where moderation is elevated to an art of living, Jean Germain not dépareillait. Discreet, almost erased, jovial mug displaying a half-smile eternal, great admirer of François Mitterrand advancing to the rhythm of his city, one of the Loire quiet usually agitated in spurts. Until his suicide on Tuesday, the day of the trial “Chinese weddings.”
On 18 June 1995 Tours has just experienced one of those hiccups in history. That evening, the Socialist candidate breath Hall nose and beard of his opponent always, Jean Royer. Thirty-six-year reign come to an end in favor of a triangle and the surprise of Touraine.
The skeptics are so convinced: the next six years will be only a parenthesis. Dud. Jean Germain reign nineteen years in total, before giving his seat to the UMP Serge Babary in March 2014.
Reign undivided
almost two decades, former Professor of Public Law and President of the François Rabelais University (1988 to 1993), has transformed the Touraine capital. Practicing the art of compromise, Social Democratic assumed manages to bring together, in the same urban community, the communist mayor senator from Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, Marie-France Beaufils and very Chirac – then Sarkozy – deputy mayor of Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, Philippe Briand. The latter, who counted among his close friends for over thirty years, also confided in L’Express: “No sense of dialogue and moderation, we probably would never have succeeded.” At the same time, Jean Germain develops cultural, launched the construction of a new neighborhood and the construction of a tram line. “He modernized and developed this city to which he was deeply attached,” said Jean-Patrick Gille, MP (PS) and deputy mayor from 1995 to 2012.
Meanwhile, this son of a pastry and a preparative pharmacy sized real political stronghold, on which he reigns supreme, distributing key positions in his trusted men. “It was the undisputed boss in Touraine, describes a local socialist leader. And it remained very influential despite losing last year.” The side of his opponents, then it denounces the “Germania”, “an organized system operating in an opaque,” as described in the opponent Express (New Centre), Sophie Auconie. No results, since the “King John,” as it was called in Tours, was comfortably re-elected in 2001 and again in 2008.
2011: the first cracks
Three years later, however, the first cracks begin to laze the statue of the commander. In 2011, he was accused by the Court of Auditors to have worked 18 years in the position of Inspector General of Education without providing real work. Despite his denials, the arrow cut the armor of a man already regularly blamed for its tendency to accumulate mandates and functions (he ranked second in the national ranking of dippers established by L’Express in 2013). Internally, his omnipotence is challenged. Ejected from the Presidency of the General Council, his former protected Claude Roiron, does not digest the penalty. “Jean Germain has changed. It has made a withdrawal into himself until the isolation and supports fewer contradiction” was singing early 2013, former Assistant (PS) Northwest Tours.
According to many, it is precisely this isolation which marks the end of a reign glazed by several cases. “There is not much left his office and had not realized that he had lost contact with the city and its inhabitants,” told Serge Babary Mayor (UMP) Tours shortly after his victory at the municipal election in 2014. In fact, in Tours, the third term of Jean Germain has been placed under the sign of suspicion of favoritism. First there was the design of the tram and procurement entrusted to the agency Régine Charvet-Pello, deputy mayor in charge of education and higher education; and the case of the Woman-Loire. The implementation project of this monumental naked on a river created a local controversy even stronger that it was the work of Michel Audiard, sculptor close to the mayor.
A late reigns shadow
These episodes who had no legal consequence, Jean Germain had beautiful game to remember that did not participate in commissions of tenders and judge “absurd to prohibit companies or local artists to work in Tours, under the pretext that some crying cronyism.” Did not count the case of Chinese marriages that would just bring it to an indictment October 30, 2013, and its referral to the criminal court on Tuesday.
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