“A note does not make a vote”, judge François Hollande

“A note is not a vote, that’s the main point.” The popular primary won by Christiane Taubira “do not change anything” and the left remains deadlocked, judged former socialist president François Hollande on Monday 31 January. “Was the popular primary the right method and the right time? Was it the right method when candidates did not want to present themselves and were invited against their thank you”, he also wondered during a conference at Sciences-Po Paris.

For him, this method “necessarily deprives the victorious person of the legitimacy of this process”, recalling that he had participated in a primary on the left in 2011 with “three million participants” and with “debates that made it possible to see things clearly” between the different candidates (Martine Aubry, Ségolène Royal, Arnaud Montebourg, Manuel Valls and Jean-Michel Baylet). Similarly, the winner of the 2012 presidential election believes that this primary has arrived “too late” and that it should have been preceded by a “programmatic work”.

But above all, “for there to be a dynamic – and it is desired –, for there to be a union – and it is desirable – there must be a vote, not a note. That is the major point “, he decided. And, according to him, “that’s why, beyond the people and, beyond the sincerity of the participants, this popular primary does not change anything. We are at the same impasse, there are still as many candidates and there are not political line”. This “the debate should not be about the people but about the political line” who is not “not just a series of measures” but which should serve “understand what we want to achieve together”.

Again questioned about a possible presidential candidacy, the former president replied with a new pirouette: “I would say that a former president can be a candidate. Nothing prevents it… I am talking about the law… I even know former presidents who wanted to be candidates and who did not succeed”, he quipped in allusion to Nicolas Sarkozy, of whom he was victorious in 2012. Last Tuesday, his entourage denied the rumors of a possible candidacy for the legislative elections in Corrèze, specifying that he could speak in mid-February on the situation in France, in a context “serious enough” so that a former president “kind of his reserve”.