(Paris) Former French President François Hollande curls up in a book to be published on Wednesday the current head of state Emmanuel Macron and the far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour, putative candidates for the April 2022 presidential election, and praises them merits of social democracy.
In his book titled Confront (Éditions Stock), the former socialist president (2012-2017) reviews the various putative or declared presidential candidates and is ironic about some of them: he sees Emmanuel Macron as “a man of no doctrine, a traveler without a compass ”,“ changing opinions according to events, jumping from one conviction to another like a frog on water lilies ”.
He judges that the far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour has nourished “a growing bitterness” of not being sufficiently recognized. “But it is not Trump who wants, even in miniature,” adds Mr. Hollande.
SCREENSHOT
Confront of Francois Hollande
Neither has officially declared his candidacy for the spring 2022 deadline. For the first time in early October, an opinion poll gave Éric Zemmour 17% -18% of voting intentions, behind President Emmanuel Macron (24% to 27%) but ahead of the leader of the traditional French far right Marine Le Pen, credited with 15% to 16% of the vote.
To “face” the major challenges of France and “the great transformation” of society, “who is best placed to restore hope, in the face of disarray, resignation, weariness, and abstention? Not liberalism, not sovereignty, not “leftism” or ecology. It’s good old social democracy, ”François Hollande told AFP.
However, he judges that he would need “a bath of youth” and that the candidate of this social democracy in 2022, the socialist mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, should “have a global project” and “address everyone”.
François Hollande praised the merits of this “woman of calm, determination and tenacity”, to whom he advises to remain “proud of her socialist identity” to “be able to bring together a majority of French people”.
“I call for the rallying of voters around a driving force which must be the left of government,” he said in a daily interview The Parisian Tuesday evening, reaffirming that he is not a presidential candidate.