Some French High Authorities don’t like France’s High Authority for Transparency of Public Life much

In the wake of the article published on Contrib’City on 4th March, it isn’t just at the Yvelines level that the French Institution for Transparency in Public Life (the HATVP) is not well regarded by many (vice) presidents, but the problem also seems to be happening nationally.

Francois Bayrou: po-faced in front of the HATVP?

Worried about the public finances, with a panicking official debt, my attention has been caught by the High Commissioner for Planning (A voluntary work), who besides being the President of MODEM and the Mayor of Pau (to be pronounced as [pɘʊ]), 76000 inhabitants, is also the President of the Agglomeration Community of Pau-Béarn-Pyrénées: Francois Bayrou. His HATVP account displays: Declaration Filed – Publication Pending. This implies that he hadn’t ever declared his ‘amour’ i.e. his remunerations to the institution.

However, all the elected officials concerned with the HATVP have two months for declaring any change of situation. Bayrou, the former National Education Minister and Minister of Justice has been the City Councillor of Pau since 2014 and chief of the Bearnaise Agglomeration. Alas, it is his bad luck that he seems to not have made acquaintance until recently with Madam Transparency. Again, a pure coincidence with the recent Contrib’City publications!

Richard Ferrand – A transparency to reach: hard, fair and needed for his post as France’s n°3

This former Finistère département^[1]A French département is grossly the equivalent of a British county Deputy, presently the Regional Councillor of magnificent Brittany, hasn’t been speaking to the Institution since 31st July 2019. Again, a big timid who was afraid to blush in front of the lady: deranged, the Number Three of the French State forgets to mention his election to the Presidency of National Assembly, on 12th September 2018, with his salary soaring from 7,239 to 14,536 gross Euros per month.

Gerard Larcher, watch out for Contrib’City’s archer!

This respectable man of the French State, President of the Senate since 2014, draws a compensation of 14,435 Euros each month. Brilliant veterinarian and a Horseman, France’s Number Two, couldn’t prevent stumbling over the HATVP and – Bang! – fell before the Transparency hurdles. In fact, Larcher, in the ‘Elective Positions and Offices held on the Date of the Election or Appointment’ section (declaration published in 2017), reveals absolutely ‘Nothing’. Indeed, why complicate one’s life?

But, in his defence, in 2008, the President of the Senators had lowered the expenses of his office by 44%. However, the HATVP site informs that, on the last 4th of January, our excellent Cavalier of the French politics brutally remembered about the High Authority and decided to go for another round: let’s hope that he will be able to jump over without faults this time, despite a delay of several years.

The HATVP: a conundrum or transparency?

Thus, whether at the department or national level (Recall: Article of 25th February 2021), several elected officials sulk the High Authority For Transparency In Public Life. Is it a reluctance on the part of the latter? Is it negligence? Is it an administrative phobia? In any case, whatever be the reason, the law of 11 October 2013 indicates who are the concerned elected and what are their penal obligations towards the French. Perhaps shouldn’t the HATVP head, ensure that this brilliant institution is less neglected by certain politicians?

In a period where the preceding and the present government has shown, from the beginning, a lot of confusion in the management of the COVID epidemic, where the public debt exploded, where the executive threatens probable confinement more than ever, our politicians must prove if they can be trusted (all over again) and their cohorts of electoral promises, once the elections have ‘passed’. Otherwise, the phrase Le divorce entre Etat et gouvernés (The divorce between the state and the governed) as coined by the sociologist Ali Ait Abdelmalek, could be consummated and lead to a situation of profound chaos.