With municipal elections a year away, French Guiana is seeing the resurgence of faces many thought were long gone, and not just because of their political age. In the west, several candidates are making a comeback despite convictions related to probity, according to information revealed by Le MondeFor the voter, the scene has a sense of déjà vu: same names, same promises, and that clanging of pots and pans that can never really be drowned out.
In Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, the territory's second-largest city, Léon Bertrand officially announced his candidacy in mid-January. A former mayor for thirty-five years, former member of parliament, and former Minister of Tourism, he knows every street and every network, returning to them as if they were his own home. His legal history, however, is marked by a case involving irregularly awarded public contracts in the early 2000s, when he presided over the Western Guiana Intermunicipal Authority. The courts found him guilty of passive corruption and favoritism, with alleged cash benefits related to campaign financing. In 2018, the Court of Cassation upheld a harsh sentence: three years in prison, an €80,000 fine, and a three-year ban from holding public office.
When ineligibility fades, memory falters
Then there was the other case. In 2019, Léon Bertrand was convicted again, this time for complicity in misuse of company assets: eighteen months in prison, a €100,000 fine, and a three-year ban from holding public office, all related to an €887,000 severance package deemed unjustified, paid in 2008 to the managing director of a semi-public company he chaired. In 2021, the Cayenne Court of Appeal ordered that the sentences be served concurrently; the former elected official ended up under house arrest with an electronic tag after spending a total of eleven months in detention, despite having announced in 2018 "the end of [his] political career." Clearly, some farewells are shorter than others.
In Apatou, a town of about 10,000 inhabitants, Paul Dolianki is also attempting a comeback. Mayor since 2008, he was convicted in 2021 for favoritism, conflict of interest, and embezzlement of public funds: an 18-month suspended sentence, a €100,000 fine, and a five-year ban from holding public office with immediate effect, which abruptly ended his term. Five years later, he's back at the starting line, as if the legal clock had simply run its course… and as if politics had no other source of candidates.
One very concrete, almost intimate question remains: what do the people of French Guiana want to punish—the actions themselves, the local record, or nothing at all? The law has its rhythm, the ballot box has its own, often more unpredictable and sometimes merciless. As 2026 approaches, western French Guiana becomes a full-scale test: will local democracy choose to turn the page, or will it reread the past to its very end?
