By Leigh Thomas
PERPIGNAN, France, March 7 (Reuters) – In the streets of Perpignan, a faded Mediterranean city near France’s border with Spain, the incumbent far-right mayor Louis Aliot is pitching a simple message as he asks voters for another term: more police, more cameras and more order.
The National Rally (RN) mayor has made security the centrepiece of his administration, and his party is holding up this city of 122,000, the biggest it controls, as a blueprint for governance that it hopes to replicate elsewhere ahead of nationwide municipal elections this month.
Aliot, who leads in polls despite an embezzlement conviction that could bar him from office if his appeal fails, said Perpignan has been a laboratory for RN governance since he won city hall in 2020 and a showcase for its national ambitions when the French vote for a new president in 2027.
“When the National Rally is in office, well, we govern, we run cities and we run them well,” he said in an interview.
Wins in other cities would give Marine Le Pen’s party a springboard going into next year’s presidential election. Polls show the RN performing well in Toulon, Nice and Marseille, although a two-round system makes final outcomes hard to forecast.
TOUGH TALK
The RN’s law-and-order message resonates with many voters in Perpignan, where just streets from the Catalan-influenced, historic centre lie run-down neighbourhoods that are among France’s poorest.
Two weeks before the March 15 and 23 elections, RN leader Jordan Bardella and hard-left rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon – both presidential hopefuls – held duelling weekend rallies, turning the city into a symbolic battleground.
“Faced with the violence engulfing our country year after year, we intend to make public order an absolute priority,” Bardella told supporters.
Aliot promised 50 more police officers and 200 surveillance cameras, particularly in outer suburbs to which the middle class has fled from poverty-stricken inner neighbourhoods that are home to the city’s sizeable North African and Roma populations.
The city has already expanded its municipal force to 199 officers from 161 in 2020, and now deploys 1.6 municipal police per 1,000 residents – proportionally the highest among French cities of more than 100,000 and nearly three times Paris’s 0.6, according to Reuters’ analysis of Interior Ministry data.
More aggressive policing has seen drug-trafficking cases climb sharply, with Perpignan now reporting the seventh most among over 50 large French cities, up from 18th in 2020. Overall trafficking cases opened by police have more than doubled, while fixed-penalty fines for minor possession have quadrupled.
FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS
The security focus comes at a cost. Municipal debt stands at 1,600 euros per inhabitant, well above the 1,200 average in similar-sized cities, according to Finance Ministry data.
Property tax rates are higher than in 71% of comparable cities, and 98% of peers have lower local business taxes.
Even so, business weekly Challenges ranked Perpignan the third best-run city in France last week, a talking point for Aliot’s allies as they try to convert security-minded voters beyond the RN’s base.
Aliot leads with 44% in the first round according to an early December Ifop poll, benefiting from a fractured opposition split among five rivals.
A far-right political veteran, Aliot has been central to Le Pen’s campaign to soften the image of the anti-immigration party and make it more palatable to the mainstream voter. Opinion polls project either Le Pen or Bardella, her protégé, winning the first round of next year’s presidential vote and facing a tight run-off contest.
On the ground, reactions were mixed. At a city-centre market, retiree Marie Nivet said she welcomed cleaner streets and visible policing, though she wanted more action on drugs.
She was undecided on whether to support Aliot because of the looming appeal court verdict over misuse of EU funds that also threatens Le Pen’s political survival.
Aliot said he would appeal any unfavourable outcome to France’s highest court, but that others in his team could take his place if needed.
The legal uncertainty didn’t bother Laure Guérin, a retired private-school administrator, who said she would back Aliot because of the RN’s law-and-order stance.
Others were more wary. Christian Pyguillem, a retired property manager, credited Aliot with cleaner streets and better security, but said entrenched poverty in some neighbourhoods requires deeper urban renewal than any mayor has attempted.
“We’ll give him another six years, but it’s a vote motivated by the local situation, I don’t agree with their other ideas,” he said.
SPLINTERED OPPOSITION
Rivals said the security push has failed to deliver and that city finances have deteriorated. Centre-right challenger Bruno Nougayrède accused Aliot of neglecting local duties for national politics and putting publicity before results.
“These five years have been marked by complete inaction for the people of Perpignan,” Nougayrède told Reuters. “A lot of resources went into PR, but the city itself has not changed.”
Hard-left candidate Mickaël Idrac called Aliot’s record “catastrophic,” blaming “frenzied” investment in arming police and surveillance cameras. He also criticised what he described as divisive rhetoric.
Aliot countered that voters would judge by how they feel in their streets. He casts the RN as the party willing to enforce order after decades of drift by rivals on left and right.
“If the left had defended the poor, we wouldn’t be here today. If the right had defended order, we wouldn’t be here today,” Aliot said.
(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; editing by Richard Lough and Alex Richardson)
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