Déliberér délibération

[Chancer]

As part of my campaign of attrition to be an ever increasing pain in the backside of our Maire I went to the réunion of the conseil municipale this evening to ask a couple of awkward questions repeatedly until they were answered.

It was an eye opener to see how things were done but not at all surprising, there was no discussion, it seemed like the procés verbal had already been written in advance, he was reading it out as if to say "X was discussed and M. le Maire was given the authority to ......" then followed by "any abstentions, anyone against, unanimous! thankyou" there was no voting, no-one raised a hand, no-one said a word but I know that they would not be allowed to do so, the adjoints  come to me in secret giving me the awkward questions to ask and I am more than happy to do so.

My question, déliberér and délibération was the verb used each time he railroaded something through the sheep, have I misunderstood it, in this context does it mean perhaps that X was proposed rather than X was discussed?

[NormanH]

I have always understood it to mean 'discuss', 'think about ' a bit like réfléchir....essentially done before a decision is taken

A délibérer would mean 'to be discussed', not 'has been decided'.

[Chancer]

Well the procès verbal will read that it was discussed and then voted for by the majority but what happened was the procès verbal was written beforehand, he effectively reads out what he is telling them they have already discussed and decided, then he says anyone any abstentions, anyone against? and nobody says anything and it is carried.

Thats how democracy works in my commune, I can see now why the 1ière adjoint was delighted when I said that I intended to keep a close eye on all the réunions, it is he that secretly tells me when they occur because they are not planned or even publicised, when the Maire has something to push through the members get a text at the last minute, the annonce was not posted at the Mairie until 5 minutes before the meeting (I staked the place out from the car park) and not on the noticeboard but stuck on the door.

The questions I asked were "are the questions from the public and the answers to them recorded in the procès verbal(minutes)? he was very uncomfortable and said yes (he was lying) then I asked were the annonces for the réunions publicised on the  panneau d'info, the communes web site and given to the local paper, a lot of wriggling with me having to repeat the question a second and then 3rd time before he said no they were not

The first 10 minutes was spent discussing the minutes of the previous réunion, I had already got a copy from the secretaire but I was shocked to realise that the last article  read out had been removed from of the public copy, the refusal by the Maire to allow the boîte à loisirs (whose head was his opponent in the élections) to use the photocopier in the Mairie, she accused him of discrimination and pure méchanceté and he climbed down and allowed them to use the photocopier.

My question for the next meeting will be to ask them to explain what the the Conseil municipal considers the verb déliberér to mean?

[Loiseau]

A British friend of mine did a stint on the village's conseil municipal.

She was very disillusioned to find that the maire just expected them to rubber-stamp all his decisions, without them being discussed by the conseillers first.

Angela

[NormanH]

Have you read this Chancer?

http://www.vie-publique.fr/decouverte-institutions/institutions/collectivites-territoriales/democratie-locale/comment-citoyen-peut-il-controler-action-elus-locaux.html

and further in

http://www.vie-publique.fr/decouverte-institutions/institutions/collectivites-territoriales/democratie-locale/comment-citoyen-peut-il-participer-aux-decisions-locales.html

[nomoss]

My wife and I attended a council meeting in Helston, Cornwall, in 1980, (shortly before we sold up and left the country), hoping to discover why planning applications for work on our house were consistently turned down, despite our making whatever changes were suggested by them.

Once everyone was seated, the first motion proposed, and passed by a show of hands, was to exclude the press and public, at which point we were politely but firmly moved towards and shown the door.

Seems to me that Chancer's council are a lot more democratic[:D]