The sponsorship period for presidential candidates has been closed since Friday, March 4. The electoral campaign will therefore really be able to begin, the official list of candidates will be Monday, March 7. But not easy to campaign in the context that we know of the war in Ukraine. Decryption with the sociologist Jean Viard.
franceinfo: Is there room left in our minds to talk about, for example, domestic politics?
John Viard: It’s true that the great pandemic, like the war in Ukraine, both upsets us and brings us together, because we tend to shake hands with the hand that leads, and we don’t want that hand to shake. not. This effectively gives a regrouping effect, and we see it in the polls vis-à-vis the President of the Republic. Obviously those who are close to Putin find themselves sidelined, like the anti-vaccines, we talk about it a lot, but they are still very much in the minority. But a recent poll shows that 54% of French people find that French democracy works well and 82% of them say they are happy.
Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron’s record for five years at the Elysée, we are going to talk about it in this campaign, but there are other other themes to be addressed in a presidential campaign and the French have expressed several times during the mandate their willingness to debate. Shouldn’t we be deprived of it today with this traditional moment of the presidential election?
No, but what is very complicated, if you take the “Yellow Vests”, for example, basically, what did they ask for? Almost an individual face-to-face with the President of the Republic. It is the demand of a society where everyone feels listened to, which is very complicated because we are more than 65 million inhabitants…
And it’s true that where we live, we would like to be consulted on the developments. But that’s micro-democracy, and so is the ecology conference, I think the president was probably over-committed by saying he was going to follow everything that was said, but as a tool to that French people reflect and enrich the debate alongside elected officials, these are things that work well.
There is a very individuated society where when there are crises, everyone basically wants to go directly to power, basically that was the initiative referendum. But it’s not a demand for a horizontal society, I don’t believe that,
But we can talk about all these debates in the presidential campaign that is opening. Is there room for that?
No, this year, honestly, there won’t be room. I think there will be a second-round debate because there, there will only be two candidates left, and there, we will see things settle down, because when we know who is going to face the president of the Republic, we will also know what the others are doing and what they support or not.
Basically, we are going to draw the political field of the future by the logic of alliances that we are going to stage. But it’s true that it’s because of the war in Ukraine – and what’s more, it upsets us deeply, the scenes we see are appalling – so I think that suddenly, indeed, there is there won’t be the debates that could have had, that will give us five years ahead of us which effectively cannot be built on very specific proposals.
Basically, it will be the continuation of the first mandate, more than a new mandate, if it is Mr. Macron who is elected, and if not, obviously, it will be a completely different break.