Bally Bagayoko embraces his symbolic standoff with the Élysée Palace

Mayor Bally Bagayoko continues to defend his decision not to hang the president's portrait in his office Emmanuel MacronWhen questioned on the BFMTV set yesterday, the elected representative from La France Insoumise stated that it was a "non-issue" and took responsibility for a gesture that he presented as purely political and symbolic.

Since his election as mayor of Saint-Denis last March, Bally Bagayoko has made the removed presidential portrait a political symbol. He explains that he wants to leave the framed portrait "upside down" until the state does more to address the social inequalities affecting his municipality and, more broadly, the Seine-Saint-Denis department.

A controversy that has become national

The matter quickly escalated beyond the local level after the intervention of the prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis, who asked the mayor to "respect republican tradition" by reinstalling the presidential portrait in his office. The state representative acknowledged, however, that there is no legal obligation to display the president's portrait in French town halls.

The controversy has been widely reported in the national political debate, with some right-wing officials denouncing a symbolic attack on institutions, while figures from La France insoumise defend a militant act falling within the bounds of local political freedom.

Bally Bagayoko becomes a rising figure in LFI

Elected in the first round of the 2026 municipal elections, Bally Bagayoko now leads the largest French city administered by La France Insoumise. A former RATP executive and ex-basketball coach, he has gradually established himself as one of the new media figures of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's movement.

The mayor of Saint-Denis openly advocates a strategy of political confrontation with the executive branch on social, security, and institutional issues. For his supporters, this sequence symbolizes the emergence of a new generation of elected officials from working-class suburbs; for his opponents, it illustrates, on the contrary, a growing polarization of French political life.