30 years ago in Toulon: the city weighed down by ideology and finance
Mathieu Dalaine Published on 06/19/2025 at 9:40 p.m., updated on 06/19/2025 at 9:40 p.m.
"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)
A cut for associationsOutlawed, "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.
"Facholand" in booksWhile 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..."
Dominique Michel sighs. The former National Front deputy mayor, who switched to Bruno Mégret's National Republican Movement (MNR) in 1999, experienced firsthand the divisions within the municipal majority that disrupted the end of Jean-Marie Le Chevallier's term. "The Mégretists had become traitors to the Le Penists. In hindsight, I think we could have done things differently. We were far from the image we would have liked to project."
At the time, the mayor himself would eventually leave the National Front, tired of taking orders from Saint-Cloud, and of "playing pick-up sticks with sticks of dynamite" (1). Accused of nepotism by some of his troops, his wife Cendrine crystallizing the resentment, Jean-Marie Le Chevallier saw his majority split into five groups: the loyalists, the convinced National Frontists, the Mégretists, the "republican right" and the independents. From then on, the municipal councils, where the withdrawal of delegations was the new fashionable sport, became particularly stormy.
Salan is unanimous"A single decision allowed them to regain the beautiful harmony of yesteryear: that of naming a crossroads in the upper town after General Salan (who was head of the OAS, Editor's note) on December 21, 2000, " wrote José Lenzini in the daily newspaper Le Monde. And in April 2000, "it was at the cost of small renunciations and painful contortions that the mayor managed to pass the budget in extremis, showing an imbalance of 13 million francs (1.98 million euros)."
This was the moment that Jean-Marie Le Chevallier chose to launch into the 2001 municipal election campaign, at the head of the "Toulonnais d'abord" group. But the latter was hardly optimistic, confiding to the evening daily: "The FN operates like a sect. As soon as you leave, those who remain shoot at you." In fact, the election would be a slap in the face for the far right, divided as never before. The list of former prefect Jean-Charles Marchiani, close to Le Pen's ideas, recovered 14% of the vote. The former chief magistrate was credited with 7.8%, while only 5.5% of Toulon residents voted again for the National Front (Jean-Louis Bouguereau) and 2% cast their ballot for Dominique Michel. The forty-one elected officials from 1995 left the town hall for good.
1. In The National Front in Business, by Michel Samson, published by Calmann-Lévy (1997).
Var-Matin
