2023-08-11 17:15:00
Life can be beautiful. But sometimes also harsh and treacherous.
François Culot’s wife, Sylvia, who always follows her husband’s public activity closely, is facing health problems.
These are such that the mayor of Virton made a decision, which he announced this Friday at the end of the day, very moved, to the members of the municipal college and to his Écolo and PS partners. “I am going to resign from my mandate as mayor and elected official to support my wife in her daily life and in her fight once morest illness.” A bit like the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sophie Wilmès announced in 2022 that she was retiring from her post as minister to accompany her ailing husband, François Culot adopted the same approach.
The choice of reason and heart.
He leaves in two months
François Culot specifies that he will remain in office for two more months and then he should leave politics in October. It is the 1st alderman Vincent Wauthoz (IC) who should wear the mayoral sash until the municipal elections of October 2024.
A new alderman (municipal councilor Elodie Baudry?) was to enter college, not to mention the integration of a new municipal councillor.
The announcement of the withdrawal from political life of the mayor of Virton will surprise many. With in October 2012 his slogan “Young in politics, experienced in life”, François Culot had carried for the first time his candidacy for a municipal ballot, at 151 years old. With unexpected success since he immediately managed a big popular score and was designated 1st citizen of his city.
With his own style, enthusiastic, positive, independent and hostile to partisanship, François Culot learned on the job the management of public affairs, with sometimes difficult episodes (the invasion of the municipal council in 2014 by sympathizers of Gaia opposed to mink farming in Bleid, the controversial word “Branquignols”) or more cheerful (the inauguration of the swimming pool in 2018 and the end of the work on the main square renovated last year).
“Thank you to the people”
“What I remember above all from these 11 years at the head of our Commune, he says, is this tremendous recognition that people have given me. I liked meeting them, listening to their problems, trying to solve them. . I was mayor 7 days a week, my phone was public, you might call me at any time.”
His City of Virton was his great passion. Renovate it. Make her more beautiful. Create a bright and welcoming main square. “I feel it, my city. I know all its neighborhoods by heart”, he told us a few days ago. “The City Ahead” was the title of his first book, published in 2016. Quite a program!
“I say a huge thank you to the people who have always supported me. I would have liked to run for a third term in the October 2024 elections, but private and family constraints force me to retire from politics. This is how it is. I must admit, apart from the celebration of my marriage and the birth of my children, the date of the elections of October 14, 2012 will have been the most important moment of my life”, confides François Culot.
The day following tomorrow, perhaps, he intends to realize a dream he has carried with him for years. Build a school in rural Senegal, a school that will bear the name of one of his friends who left too soon, killed by cancer: the Jacky Antoine school.
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