“If he declares himself at the beginning of February, there will be nine weeks left”, it’s nothing, confirms a leading minister. Emmanuel Macron even wants to hold out even longer: at least 15 more days. And “he will hold”, assures a loved one. The health restrictions to face the Omicron wave are anyway in place at least until January 24, underlines the entourage of the president. Impossible to move before.
By mid-February, the President of the Republic, still not officially a candidate, will not let go of his pilgrim’s staff. He must make an average of two trips per week in the region. Then it will be a “blitzkrieg”, announces a member of the executive committee of the Republic in March.
At the party headquarters, the ground is being prepared: in ten days, the “Youth with Macron” will present a series of proposals to feed the program. Their elders, them, will soon begin to peel the 25,000 contributions collected as part of the “Great March” version 2022: these last three months, the militants returned knocking on doors to identify the concerns of the French. A material to grind to bring out campaign axes that stick to the expectations of voters, as in 2017.
There are clues as to the form that the declaration of candidacy of the Head of State could take. Since the start of the school year, the strategy has been to install the obvious. And it will continue. Around him, we therefore exclude a very formalized or solemn declaration. “The French have already understood that his intention and his goal is to be a candidate”, validates a loved one.
The entry into the countryside, and the countryside itself, will be under the sign of proximity. “It is when he is in contact with people, like during the meetings of the Great National Debate that they really see who he is”, pleads a friend who would like the French to see a Macron “nice, empathetic, and not an arrogant Republican monarch”.
A fervent support recommends him to privilege with the big meetings – even if there will be some also – the “vis-a-vis the French”, in small gymnasiums, communal rooms, in front of a few hundred people at most. This idea received a more than favorable echo in the very first circle.