Many years ago, and after the final departure from the scene of Jacque Médecin, we remarked in these columns that, “Nice’s gravy train has slowed down and some passengers have been forced to get off but sooner of later others will climb aboard and it will pick up speed again.”
This prediction has been confirmed on numerous occasions.

Most recently the old days of Jacquou were recalled at the end of June when police raided offices at city hall and later arrested Martial Meunier-Jourde, mayor Peyrat’s head of protocol and international relations, and Daniel Véran, chief of the municipal police. The two men are under investigation for allegedly splitting between them a one million euro bribe related to the award of a contract for the building of a new 4 sitar hotel in Nice.

Although both men are out on bail, inquires into this later affair niçoise are likely to take some time. Jacques Peyrat has complained about the media coverage and evoked, “the presumption of innocence” but even some of his long-term supporters have been critical, commenting on his poor judgement in choosing staff and claiming, like Auguste Verola, that “he only hears what he wants to hear”.

This latest scandal illuminates Peyrat’s famous remark after refusing a bid from a German company for one of the tramway contracts that “they wouldn’t understand our niçoise values”. Germans, and some other foreigners, who may purse their lips at this region’s endemic corruption should ponder another quotation. “I belong,” Jacques Medecin once told Patrick Middleton in an interview, “to an ancient Mediterranean political tradition in which you do good for others but you also do good for yourself.”


 

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