“Are you going to the meeting? Say hello to Manu! At the exit of the La Défense metro station, a well-dressed and attractive lady seemed to regret not being able to join this peaceful crowd heading towards the large Arena room where sports matches usually take place. Between the gleaming towers that house the gratin of French high finance, France, which is doing well, was there. Business school students, business executives, retirees did not want to miss the opportunity to participate in the first and last electoral assembly of a president who only entered the campaign a week ago. .
Eight days before the first round of the election, while Emmanuel Macron leads in the polls, these 30,000 supporters attended a wise and orderly speech lasting more than two hours, interrupted by a single video clip. The president, who fears abstention in the second round while his opponent Marine Le Pen could follow him with 47.5% of the vote, according to the latest polls, was visibly addressing his left-wing electorate.
Without ever departing from his presidential aura and in front of an audience conquered in advance, Emmanuel Macron listed for more than an hour the new social measures he is proposing for the next five years in order to maintain the purchasing power of French, reform the hospital, fight poverty and improve the school. Without forgetting to hammer each time “We did it” or “We will do it”.
Unlike all the assemblies that took place in this campaign, the president had chosen to be alone in the middle of a huge stage. Only a cheerleader, Éric Dragant, who usually officiates for the matches of the Girondins de Bordeaux and the XV of France, preceded him to make the wave with the militants as well as the officials and members of the government seated in the first row.
In this real “American-style meeting”, as one participant said, children at the edge of the stage held up a sign displaying “Daddy President”. A kind of great electoral mass with Bengal fire and rock star parade. The whole macronie was there. From Prime Minister Jean Castex to his predecessor Édouard Philippe, without forgetting the former socialist Prime Minister Manuel Vall. In the manner of Obama, the president moved from one platform to another. As if he wanted to show that he had the same energy as in 2017.
promises and statements
“One hour from Paris, we are bombarding democracy”, he launched to set the scene before affirming that he carries “a project of progress, independence and future for our France and our Europe . “At a time when Marine Le Pen is rising in the polls by campaigning on the purchasing power of the French, Emmanuel Macron maintains that, in his five-year term, “purchasing power has increased in a historic way, and in particular for the most modest “. In the room, the most applauded measure, at least twice, will be the opening of assisted procreation for female couples.
In a somewhat academic way, the president detailed the 20 billion euros he spent to freeze gas and petrol prices before affirming that the first major cause of his next five-year term, which he doubts not in the least, will be ‘equality between men and women’, followed by ‘protecting our children’ and education and health.
“The system will tell us each time that it is impossible. But, we will! “, he hammers at each proposal as if he wanted to pose as the anti-system candidate. Only a few sentences will be devoted to the abyssal debt of France which he promises to lower “from 2026”, he says. To those who had believed that he wanted to force those on social assistance (who receive the Active Solidarity Income) to provide free hours of work, as proposed by the Republican candidate, Valérie Pécresse, he specifies that it is not a question community service, but many voluntary training and reintegration activities.
While for two weeks the country has been shaken by the revelations of a Senate report according to which the sums devoted to private consulting firms exploded during Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term, the President only touched on the subject in claiming that those who blame him have done the same. For a large number of analysts, these revelations concerning in particular the American firm McKinsey, whose members worked for free on Emmanuel Macron’s campaign in 2017, could strongly influence voters. In the press, comparisons are rife with the “Bokassa jewels” affair which, in 1981, favored the election of François Mitterrand and weighed down Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
As American presidents do, Emmanuel Macron thanked his family for a long time on stage and especially “the one who brings me the most”, his wife, Brigitte Macron. Claiming his position neither on the right nor on the left, he called on “all those who, today – from social democracy to the Gaullists, via the ecologists – have not yet joined us to do so, because since the beginning, we have only one party, it is our country! »
It took almost two long hours before the candidate called for general mobilization against the far right. Without ever mentioning the name of the candidate of the nationalist right, Éric Zemmour, who maintains that with the current rates of immigration, France is faced with a “great replacement”, Emmanuel Macron quipped on what he rather calls the “great stunting”. A “great withdrawal” to which he says he opposes “an independent France in a strong Europe”.
As if he were already in the campaign for the second round against Marine Le Pen, the president affirms that “the extremist danger today is all the greater since for several years, hatred, alternative truths, have become commonplace in the public debate. We have become accustomed to seeing anti-Semitic authors, other racists, on certain television sets,” he said before concluding “no to political correctness, no to politically abject”.
Sentences that give an idea of what the second round campaign will be if Marine Le Pen comes in second place on April 10, as all the polls announce.