Let’s come back to an increasingly burning political issue: the 500 sponsorships needed to compete in the presidential election. Ten days before the deadline, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Eric Zemmour have still not collected them. In question according to them, the procedure, which would put great pressure on the mayors. A situation also linked to a rhetorical question.
This may seem paradoxical, but yet it is, at least in part. But first, let’s stop for a moment on the context: three candidates indeed testify to great difficulties in their quest for sponsorships, so much so that Marine Le Pen had to take a radical decision on Tuesday, February 22: to suspend her field campaign. . “I’m just a little over forty short, which is huge. We’re 50 days from the presidential election and I have to stop my campaign to devote myself exclusively to this search for sponsorships, so it’s awful!”explained the president of the RN on RTL.
She is not the only one to have had to act: Eric Zemmour, for his part, announced “reduce sail” of his campaign. It therefore seems that the difficulties are real. However, if one or more candidates who, in fact, participate in directing the public debate during this election could not ultimately compete, it would be a real democratic earthquake.
François Bayrou announced the creation of a “sponsorship bank”, so that mayors without labels can sponsor a candidate without risking being criticized by their constituents. As for David Lisnard, President of the Association of Mayors of France, he directly launched an appeal to elected officials last Sunday. “I think it is important to take the initiative to show that sponsorships are not worth support and that we must ensure democratic and republican free expression.he explains. This is why I decided to sponsor the candidate from whom I am furthest removed, since I am ranked on the right, which is Jean-Luc Mélenchon. I ardently fight his convictions, his ideas, his values, but he must be able to compete.”
Show that sponsorships are not worth support: you hear it, this is David Lisnard’s main argument. It is also that of the Prime Minister, Jean Castex: he was speaking this afternoon at the National Assembly.
“I would like in my turn, ladies and gentlemen deputies, to launch an appeal to the elected representatives by simply saying to them, after others, this: the fact of granting one’s sponsorship to a candidate is not automatically synonymous with political support . It is also a democratic act.”
John Castexto the National Assembly
Sponsorship is not synonymous with political support: this is the argument of this beginning of the week, it is presented to us as obvious, even though we had not heard it so often before.
Legally, yes. It should be remembered that originally, the sponsorship system was set up to exclude so-called “fanciful” applications. So it was not, in effect, political support. Moreover, in the law, the term sponsorship does not appear anywhere: we simply speak of presentation. It is the mayors, parliamentarians, general and regional councilors who “present” the candidates for the presidential election: they are content to attest to a form of seriousness and legitimacy, without providing political support.
However, precisely, the term which imposed itself in the public debate is not “presentation”, but “sponsorship”. And that changes everything. One of the definitions of the word sponsorship, according to both Robert and Larousse, is “guarantee or moral support given to a person”. A surety or moral support: this is the meaning we all have in mind, unconsciously, when we hear of sponsorship. This is precisely the whole problem!
The procedure now poses a problem on the merits: no doubt it will be necessary to review it, many tracks are already on the table. But it will also require rethinking the words we use. When Jean Castex, David Lisnard and the others repeat that “sponsorship is not worth political support” : they are legally right, but rhetorically wrong.