(Paris) About three weeks before the first round of the presidential election, Emmanuel Macron commemorated the end of the Algerian war on Saturday, while his sometimes virulent rivals fight the campaign, arguing that nothing is yet decided.
Posted at 11:25 a.m.
The day after a trip to Pau where he defended his re-election project, Mr. Macron returned to the clothes of Head of State, commemorating in relative discretion the 60and anniversary of the Evian Accords of March 19, 1962.
During a ceremony at the Élysée, he said he “assumed” the memorial gestures since the start of his five-year term, which were sometimes controversial, saying he was convinced that “a day will come when Algeria will take this path”.
But, he noted, “there will inevitably be moments of nervousness” in this difficult “reconciliation of memories” on the Algerian war, the trauma of which is still felt.
Several right-wing and far-right candidates criticized the anniversary, arguing that the massacres continued until Algerian independence on July 5, 1962.
“There are 150,000 harkis who were killed after this date. There are 10,000 Pieds-noirs who were killed after this date. So, no, I don’t want to commemorate this date as the end of the war, ”said Marine Le Pen (RN), Saturday in Courtenay (Loiret).
Her right-wing rival Valérie Pécresse for her part pledged on Friday to find, if she is elected, “another date” than March 19.
“Trick” and “theft”
In this particular campaign in the middle of the war in Ukraine, all the counters seem to be green for Emmanuel Macron, who on Saturday received the support of the left-wing collective of the Republican Spring.
He alternates his role as head of state and candidate, and imposes his tempo and agenda on a fragmented opposition, refusing to do battle directly with his adversaries. They accuse him in return of dodging direct confrontation.
Emmanuel Macron is riding the wave of polls which give him more or less 30% of the voting intentions in the first round on April 10, far ahead of Marine Le Pen who is in a range of 16 to 18%. And the polls give Mr. Macron the winner in the second round in all scenarios, including a duel identical to that of the 2017 election.
Opposite, his opponents say they are still convinced that nothing is yet decided, while the question of the legitimacy of a president who would be re-elected without real debate, and against a backdrop of fears of massive abstention, emerges.
The far left candidate Philippe Poutou estimated on France 2 on Saturday that “contrary to what Emmanuel Macron wants to believe, the election is not played at all. Mr. Macron refuses a debate, we are in the process of rigging the presidential election ”.
On the right, candidate LR, who is undergoing a slow erosion in the polls (around 11%), focuses her attacks on Emmanuel Macron, denouncing as in Vannes (Morbihan) on Saturday a president-candidate “illusionist who made his balance sheet disappear and don’t want to talk about it.”
His rival Eric Zemmour is for his part trying to remobilize his troops, accusing Mr. Macron and Mr.me Le Pen to “attempt” to “steal the election”. “They want to reinstate the Le Pen-Macron match that you no longer wanted, this final without any suspense, this wrestling show where everything is rigged, between the eternal teenager and the eternal loser”, he launched during of a meeting in Metz on Friday evening.
The ex-polemicist caps between 11 and 13% of voting intentions and has been going through a delicate sequence since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
On the left, the battle is just as raging between the leader of LFI Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the best placed in the polls, and his environmental rivals Yannick Jadot and to a lesser extent the socialist Anne Hidalgo and the communist Fabien Roussel.
The latter have multiplied the attacks targeting the candidate of the radical left on his positions in the conflict in Ukraine, Yannick Jadot castigating for example Friday evening on LCI his “non-alignment” and his “capitulation” in front of Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Mélenchon is trying to amplify his current dynamic and plans to bring together tens of thousands of people in a march on Sunday in Paris, “For the Sixth Republic”.