With 22% of the vote and only 400,000 ballots away from his far-right rival having deprived him of the second round, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has once again established himself as the strong man of the left under the colors of La France Insoumise. He convinced 7.7 million French people, including… Arthur Germain. The latter is the son of Anne Hidalgo, also a candidate for the Socialist Party but who only collected the starving score of 1.7% (just over 600,000 ballots). The young man did not want to vote for his mother.
He had announced it in an interview for The Instant of Luxury 2.0 : Arthur Germain studied all the programs and in particular the proposals in favor of ecology – his battle horse, he who launched the Eau’tonome association – refusing to feel obliged to vote for the one who gave him life. “It’s important, I think, to have that freedom. In my message, I don’t want to be blocked from my mother“, he said then. And it is clear that he kept his word since he reveals that, in the end, he did not in fact grant his ballot for the first round of the presidential election to Anne Hidalgo . “I did not vote for my mother. I voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, not out of big conviction in reality. It wasn’t because I thought what he was saying was great. But his idea of creating a Sixth Republic could be a way for people to ask questions about globality“, he justified this Tuesday, April 26 in Apollo Morning on RMC and RMC Story.
A speech consistent with the one he held on Twitter, revealing that he intended to abstain for the second round, categorically refusing to give in to the pressures of the blocking vote against Marine Le Pen and disagreeing with the current president – re-elected without surprise – Emmanuel Macron. “I will not vote in the 2nd round of the #presidentielles2022. The politicians are reformist. I am for a radical and in-depth transformation of society. We will not solve the basic problems by putting a paper in a ballot box every 5 years (…) To abstain is not to be selfish, disinterested or unconscious. It is to want another system and this other system is deeply incompatible with politics as it exists today“, he said.
Arthur Germain was far from the only one to abstain from voting in the second round since 13.6 million French people made the same choice.