(Paris) President or candidate? The question unleashes the opponents and the support of Emmanuel Macron, who gives a long interview-assessment to TF1 Wednesday evening less than four months before the presidential election, an attack on the “fairness” of speaking time according to the opposition.
The interview entitled “Where is France going?” “, Recorded under live conditions, but despite everything mounted, should allow Mr. Macron to” answer the questions that the French are asking. ”
The Head of State, who has not yet officially declared himself a candidate for a second term, must also speak “on how he lived his five-year term” and “his vision of the future”, according to the TF1 group.
It won’t be “a classic political interview, it’s not questions and answers. You have images, sounds, photos, it’s a program with screens at the Elysee, ”detailed Wednesday on France Inter Thierry Thuillier, news director of TF1. “Two major crises, that of the yellow vests and the pandemic”, will be addressed in particular.
“All the questions have been asked”, in particular on the “little sentences which marked” the Macronian quinquennium, assured Mr. Thuillier.
“Who can believe that a balance sheet is not an act of campaign? I hope that we are no longer in the days of the ORTF, I hope that there are rules of fairness, of loyalty ”, indignant the leader of the senators Les Républicains Bruno Retailleau, Wednesday on France 2.
“The fact of not being in the countryside, for us, it is more a disadvantage than an advantage”, opposed the spokesman of the government Gabriel Attal at the exit of the Council of Ministers: “It prevents us from having sufficient time to respond to many attacks and criticisms ”.
“Election propaganda”
Several contenders for the Elysee have appealed to the arbitrator, entering the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA).
“Obviously, this program is not part of the exercise of the office of President of the Republic, but in the context of the upcoming presidential election”, attacked Valérie Pécresse.
The Republican presidential candidate was joined by rebellious Jean-Luc Mélenchon and environmentalist Yannick Jadot, who announced on Twitter to seize the CSA, in the name of “fairness”.
“If the CSA wanted to be objective, it would count the two hours of this (Wednesday) evening which are hours of electoral propaganda,” blasted the far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour on RTL on Wednesday.
“For the last televisual performance that he (Emmanuel Macron) made, we separated in his remarks the strictly royal speaking time, when he spoke of the pandemic, of the vaccination”, explained to AFP the president of the CSA Roch-Olivier Maistre.
Conversely, “when it entered more into the national political debate, it was taken into account. Wednesday evening, we will do the same, “assured the boss of the CSA.
Consequently, according to Mr. Thuillier, “it is not entirely correct to say that the program will not be counted in terms of speaking time”.
“Speak to yourself”
Four months before the first round of the presidential election, scheduled for April 10, the politico-media event does not fail to revive speculation on a formal announcement of the outgoing president’s candidacy.
“How long will this masquerade which consists in making President Macron an unconfirmed candidate, but in the midst of the campaign,” protested Senator LR Alexandra Borgio Fontimp on Wednesday during the questioning session to the government.
“I do not understand this self-supporting controversy”, replied Gabriel Attal, dismissing the elected representative of the Alpes-Maritimes to the rules of the CSA.
From the 1er January, by virtue of a CSA recommendation published in October for the 2022 election, “the principle of equity must be respected both for speaking time and for airtime”.
Another line of defense for the executive: the comparison with the intervention of President Sarkozy who, in January 2012, when he was not yet a candidate for re-election, had taken part in a program broadcast on eight channels.
“Macron likes to talk to himself. It is served, ”said Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Twitter.