Six days after the local elections, we head to Dinant, where we meet Richard Fournaux, the big winner of these Dinant elections, both in preferential votes (3,415) and in number of elected representatives.
He is taking back the mayorship of his city.
Clearly, the people of Dinant who wanted something different when they voted you out in 2018 were not satisfied with the instability and have come back to you. How do you explain this triumph (fifteen out of twenty-one seats)? Did you expect such a result, and did you sense the wind turning in your favour?
For a few months now I had felt a wave of goodwill, but I underestimated its impact. I believe the public expects its representatives not only to manage “the shop” day to day, but also to sometimes dare to invest in ambitious projects.
The socialist list Pour vous, meanwhile, has completely collapsed. It has no elected representatives at all. How do you explain why things are going so badly for the PS in Dinant?
It's not my place to answer for the difficulties the PS is facing in Dinant, or more broadly in the Province of Namur. This does show, however, that within the MR we have different personalities - I'm speaking for Dinant and for my whole list - who care daily about citizens' expectations and try, structurally or on a case-by-case basis, to respond to them.
As Valéry Giscard d'Estaing once said to François Mitterrand: “You do not have a monopoly on compassion.”
You cannot hold both the mandates of Walloon MP and mayor at the same time. You have officially announced that you are choosing Dinant. Was this decision obvious to you, or did it involve a great deal of reflection?
It involved a great deal of reflection, which I shared in particular with our President Georges-Louis Bouchez and the leader for the Province of Namur, our Minister David Clarinval. But it was unthinkable for me not to respect the will of the voters.
What are your objectives and priorities for Dinant over the next six years?
My first priority is to offer my city political stability. I also intend to reinvent a genuine city project that integrates both the urban and rural dimensions of our town (Dinant on the town side, Dinant on the countryside side), as well as its tourism and heritage image.
To do this, I will start by bringing together everyone who is already running a business in Dinant, as well as everyone who wants to join us, across all sectors of activity.
And finally, if we pass through your area, what do you recommend we visit?
To visit Dinant, you shouldn't just pass through, you should stay a while. We have a wide range of high-quality accommodation and hospitality establishments.
We are fortunate to have numerous recreational, sporting and cultural activities and sites, run by both the public sector and extremely dynamic private businesses.