His candidacy was an open secret. Still had to make it official. Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday March 3 that he was a candidate for his own succession. A very late declaration, since the harvest of the 500 sponsorships of elected officials required to stand for the presidential election ends on Friday. However, the Head of State already has the necessary signatures.
“I seek your confidence for a new mandate as President of the Republic. (…) I am a candidate to defend our values that the disruptions of the world threaten”, launched the President of the Republic in a letter to the French sent to several newspapers of the regional daily press. The text was also relayed by several ministers on social networks.
With @EmmanuelMacron for #5yearsolder in the service of France.
“We will fight against inequalities, not so much by seeking to correct them always too late as by attacking them at the root. We will ensure that all children in France have the same opportunities. pic.twitter.com/HNi09g0woG— Olivier Dussopt (@olivierdussopt) March 3, 2022
If he manages to get re-elected, it will be the first time an incumbent has won a second term outside of a cohabitation period. But, if Emmanuel Macron is at the top of the voting intentions in the first round, nothing is played and the campaign promises to be very short, in particular because of the war in Ukraine. There are exactly 38 days left for the tenant of the Elysée to convince the French to continue to entrust him with the keys to the presidency.
The declaration of candidacy of Emmanuel Macron was to intervene a little earlier. According to an adviser from the Elysee Palace contacted by franceinfo, this announcement was planned before the Agricultural Show, the week of February 21, or the day of its inauguration, Saturday February 26. But the outbreak of war in Ukraine changed the plans of the French president, forcing him to devote himself fully to this major crisis. “Of course, I will not be able to campaign as I would have liked because of the context”explains the neo-candidate in his letter.
The Macronists also see in French activism on this file a point to be credited to the Head of State, as the campaign enters a new phase with his candidacy. “I think he will be credited for trying everything, whatever the outcome”advances the deputy LREM Roland Lescure. “Public opinion is quite sensitive to the president’s voluntarism, and to seeing France play a leading role in the current crisis”, said a ministerial adviser. The latter does not see any political consequence to this delay in the ignition of Emmanuel Macron’s campaign. “It’s not as if our opponents put proposals in the air that allowed them to score points and get ahead”he snaps.
For the time being, Emmanuel Macron is content to deliver guidelines more than real proposals within 40 days of the first round. In his letter to the French, Emmanuel Macron thus defends the “productive reconquest through work”. In an allusion to the pension reform, suspended in 2020, the candidate LREM believes that he “we will have to work more and continue to lower taxes on labor and production”. He also wishes “to place France at the head in the sectors which, like renewable energies, nuclear, batteries, agriculture, digital, or space will make the future and allow us to become a great ecological Nation”.
If the formalization of the candidacy of Emmanuel Macron comes at the last minute, the head of state has not ceased, for several months, to sow his small pebbles. Time and time again, he implied that his choice was already made. On November 18, for example, he was questioned about his intentions in an interview with The voice of the North. “I don’t think France has a last word to say. It has a millennial history ahead of it. That’s what I’ll wear”he explains, in an explicit reference to Eric Zemmour, who then experienced a sounding flight.
On January 4, in an interview with the readers of the Parisian, Emmanuel Macron is even more direct. “Do I continue to have ambitions, dreams and desires for our country? Yes. (…) But there is no false suspense. I want to.” A month later, the president mischievously slips to the journalists accompanying him on his trip to Moscow and Kiev that he “I’ll have to think about it at some point”in reference to his candidacy.
Three days later, on February 11, Emmanuel Macron explains to West France not consider this application because of a “epidemic peak” of Covid-19 and “of an eminently risky international situation”and this for “a few more days”. This position was criticized by the other candidates, who accused the head of state of campaigning without saying so and of using the resources of the presidency for electoral purposes.
Critics brushed aside by the supporters of Emmanuel Macron, who have repeatedly recalled that the outgoing presidents have all declared themselves late. His troops, however, did not wait for the formalization of his candidacy to start. The majority opened hostilities from the start of the school year in September to take stock of their champion and prepare their future program. “For months we have been in the field and, in a way, I feel in the countryside”explained the general delegate of LREM, Stanislas Guerini, on February 21 on franceinfo.
Supporters of the president, for example, launched the With You site at the end of January, to organize the campaign and bring together voters. Several elected Macronists then posted their sponsorship of Emmanuel Macron on social networks, often with hashtags like #avecvous, #5ansdeplus or #Macron2022. Young people with Macron, authors of several poster campaigns in favor of a second five-year term, presented proposals: extending the culture pass to college students, legalizing cannabis or even taxing inheritance “received throughout life”. The presidential majority also sought to display its unity with the launch in November of the famous “common house” Together citizens!, which brings together the different components of the president’s support.
It remains to be seen what the now candidate president will do with all these initiatives. Because his supporters know it: Emmanuel Macron is a loner, who thought of his campaign with an extremely small circle of relatives.