The step was too high. Three days before the deadline for registering the 500 sponsorships needed to compete in the presidential election, Christiane Taubira threw in the towel on March 2. It collected only 181 signatures from elected officials according to the count of the Constitutional Council. In front of his supporters, brooch in the colors of Ukraine, the former Keeper of the Seals says he wants “put an end to a useless suspense” : “Despite the promises of many elected officials, promises that have not materialized, it is obvious that we will not succeed in bringing together the 500 sponsorships required to compete in the presidential election.”
LIVE – Christiane Taubira speaks as the candidate struggles to gather her sponsorships. “I am speaking to you today to put an end to a useless suspense”: “it is obvious that we will not succeed in bringing together the 500 sponsorships”. pic.twitter.com/ShQ0bz4u4u
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) March 2, 2022
The former minister says she regrets “administrative obstacles” and also castigates political parties and “their capacity to harm”thus attributing part of the responsibility for this political failure to them.
On January 30, the former Minister of Justice came first in the popular primary and its 392,000 voters. She hoped then that all the candidates of the left would line up behind her, that her stature and her voice would weigh today. Christiane Taubira still wonders about these missing sponsorships: “Given my background, given what I have done, given my commitments, given the fact that I am fully identified in this society, this is a real question for society, not just for me. . I have seen others, I will see others, because I intend to still be active, feisty and combative.”
When asked why she came out of political retirement and why she started so late, on January 15, she answers: “I am first convinced that I have an ethical summons in the sense that I cannot continue to stay away. I felt the violence – but really the violence – of the extreme right, its ease, its indecency in the public space, the comfort with which it can vomit its hatred. And I say to myself: no, but you have a part to take, it is not possible.
Entering the campaign, she was credited with less than 4% of voting intentions in opinion polls. His main opponents in this popular primary election (Yannick Jadot, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Anne Hidalgo), who had participated only against their will, had all rejected his call for a left-wing union candidacy. Today, she maintains that it was not just another application, that she answered the call of the Taubira 2022 citizen committees created long before she started. The unfailing mobilization of these hundreds of volunteers to convince elected officials to grant him their sponsorship was not enough. “There were polls of seven, that is to say that there is a time when there are people who believe in this candidacysays the former minister. But the question for me is not a question of vanity or ego. That is precisely the difference. It’s that I say to myself I have to enter this battle at the highest level of risk.”
“I have not stopped calling for unity. I have not stopped saying that to give unity a chance, I do not respond to attacks. I do not return blows. And then I arch my back. I like to give back, I have forbidden myself to retaliate. I said to myself: I am giving the union every chance.”
Christiane Taubira, former presidential candidateat franceinfo
The New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes), this union of the left, was made without Christiane Taubira and after her withdrawal. She does not feed “not the slightest bitterness” because “there is no place for it in [sa] life”. She does not regret this adventure either, which allowed her to meet “great people” that she continues to see. “So much the better, deeply so much the bettersays Christiane Taubira. I almost want to express my gratitude. That being said, I say how ugly it is, all the same. How ugly not to have been able to make this union and really take power. Given the worsening of the social situation, the increase in people who are falling into precariousness, the widening of inequalities”.
She regrets that part of the popular and working-class electorate is turning to the National Rally as a solution to its problems: “It’s a decoy. That’s precisely why it was urgent and imperative, even imperious, that the left find itself, that it goes beyond its mutual hatreds and that it shows itself up to the appointment. It is really the negligence of the left that makes it not appear as what it is in terms of its history and its ideological heritage, and even of its capital of governmental action. This negligence of the left, she refuses to take her share of responsibility. “No, I don’t take, because it’s been twenty-five years. Frankly, I don’t take. The part I take and it’s the most beautiful, is that I stay on the left”.
On her future in politics, she also refuses to look too long at her past, her political victories as well as her failures: “Politics is practiced. Life is lived.” She maintains the mystery on the sequel, says she wants to do “lots of things” but excludes standing for presidential or legislative elections. No holidays either – “Holidays? don’t know!” The first time she took it made her “sick”. But always a life of combat, like the defense of the right to abortion. Always on the tip of your lips, a quote like this, revisited, from René Char on his Twitter account: “I knew that looking at me, they would get used to it.”