“The Lyonnais are orphans and I share their grief.” President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute this Saturday evening to his former Minister of the Interior Gérard Collomb, who died of stomach cancer at the age of 76. In a press release, the Head of State and his wife saluted the memory of this “dear friend”, evoking “a mayor who dedicated his exceptional talents of dialogue and imagination to building a city in his image”, a “man state which embodied republican ascension and authority.
The former mayor of Lyon who died on Saturday evening was an “early supporter” and an “architect of the victory” won in 2017 by Emmanuel Macron, recalled the Élysée. Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne also praised the former minister, “tireless servant of the State, republican, companion from the very beginning of the President”. “Gérard Collomb has served the French all his life,” she underlined, while Yaëlle Braun-Pivet, president of the National Assembly and member of the majority, greeted a “Walker from the first hour”.
Reactions are raining down in particular from the PS, political family of the ex-mayor of Lyon and president of Greater Lyon. François Hollande paid tribute to the socialist “militant” who “contributed to the re-foundation of the PS with François Mitterrand then Pierre Mauroy”. “Gérard was endowed with inexhaustible tenacity, rare courage and keen intelligence,” underlined the former French head of state. The president of the Occitanie region Carole Delga, for her part, greeted a “lover of Lyon of which he was a fine builder”.
On the right, political figures like Éric Ciotti, president of Les Républicains, or even Marion Maréchal, candidate of the Reconquête! to the Europeans, do not fail to recall the diagnosis of the former host of Beauvau when leaving his post in 2018. “Tomorrow, we will live face to face”, he launched, referring to people of immigration and resident in sensitive neighborhoods. “The beginnings of his terrible prophecy came true on the evening of his death, in Romans-sur-Isère,” reacted Marine Le Pen’s niece. “We will miss his lucid vision of the ills of our society,” added LR president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region Laurent Wauquiez.