CALL FOR AN ELECTION
Dairine Ni Cheallaigh,
Professor of Linguistics
Université du Sud Toulon Var
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Many observers have noted a serious breakdown of civil liberties, with the corollary of more frequent government intervention and a progressive shift towards an authoritarian regime. In the last months and in particular in the last few weeks, the sequence of events in the saga of Toulon’s university (Université du Sud, Toulon-Var) provides an excellent illustration.
However serious the errors of judgement made by the ousted President and his team may be — and it is in the interest of all that the facts come to light in what has appeared to be, from the outset, a distinctly fishy business —, one thing is clear : the resignation of President Oueslati.
Logically speaking, the Minister’s decision to impose direct rule from Paris in the form of a
Temporary Administrator, for the six-month period of the President’s and his two Vice-President’s suspension, should now be null and void.
It follows that, in accordance with established procedure, the elections should take place at the
earliest opportunity (“dans les meilleurs délais”). How soon could this be ? The calculation is easy. It
was announced last week that, in Iraq, elections needed to take place at the earliest opportunity. It was estimated that three months should suffice to put things in order in a country that has been in a state of emergency since March 2003.
What about Toulon? The news of M. Oueslati’s resignation provoked an immediate reaction
from the Minister, Valérie Pécresse. The very same day, Friday 6th November, to the surprise of the community, all prospects of an early election were ruled out. Against all expectations, she announced that there would be no elections in the near future and that the Temporary Administrator would be remaining in office for the time being. Mme Pécresse refuses to envisage elections in Toulon until “peace and quiet” have returned to the campus.
We would like to take this opportunity to reassure the Minister. Her worries are quite
unfounded. Everything here is running smoothly: the teachers teach, the students study and the researchers search (sometimes they even find), the administrative staff administers. She should not confuse turbulence in the corridors of power that link Paris and Toulon, with the untroubled waters of the campus and attribute to the campus as a whole what seems to have all the traits of a palace putsch, or more trivially a settling of old scores.
The serious internal “disfunctioning” that the Minister refers to does not affect in any way the
ordinary everyday running of the university. In consequence we can quite legitimately ask how the temporary administrator intends to go about “ the re-establishment of the smooth running of the university in the best interests of the staff and the students”, unless he means quite simply to usurp the place of a democratically elected President. How long does it take for “temporary” to become “permanent”?
A subsidiary question: Madame la Ministre warns of the danger of “manoeuvring” if the
elections are held too rapidly. Might not this be a case of identificatory projection ?
It is doubtless too early to question either the Minister’s, or, in the last resort, President
Sarkozy’s motivation. There is however, one interesting semiological detail: the « Université
du Sud Toulon Var », the official name registered by the previous administration, has been
mysteriously transformed into Université de Toulon in the most recent Ministerial
correspondence.
Quite independently of their various loyalties, the members of the USTV (students,
teachers and administrators alike), are justified in insisting on the immediate establishment of
a calendar organising the elections.
A refusal on the part of the Minister would be, to all intents and purposes, a violation of
our democratic rights.
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