In the wonderful world of the French left, days go by but are not alike. By burying her own primary of the left during the celebration of the 26th anniversary of the death of François Mitterrand, Saturday January 8 in Jarnac (Charente), Anne Hidalgo perhaps did not imagine that Christiane Taubira would put a part back in the machine on the following day. “Iaccepts the rules of the People’s Primary and I will accept the verdict (…) It is the last chance of a possible union of the left and I invite the other candidates of the left and environmentalists to do the same “, launched Sunday the former Minister of Justice, during a trip to Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis).
The Popular Primary, this citizens’ initiative independent of political parties, is organizing a vote between January 27 and 30 to try to bring out a single candidate on the left, capable of “to win ecology and social justice in 2022”. If Christiane Taubira is therefore ready to comply with the result of this unprecedented ballot, the names of other candidates such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Yannick Jadot or Anne Hidalgo will also be put to the vote, with or without their agreement. “We welcome Christiane Taubira’s decision, because the fact that it conditions her candidacy on the result of the Popular Primary goes in the direction of the rally. For us, it is not one more candidacy”, reports to franceinfo Mathilde Imer, one of the spokespersons for the Popular Primary.
This umpteenth rebound came as the five main left-wing candidates have been looking at each other doggedly for weeks. And the poker move of Anne Hidalgo, who called for the organization of a primary of all the left, on December 8 on the set of the “8 pm” of TF1, did not move the lines. The Socialist candidate, credited with 3% to 5% of voting intentions, is still struggling in the polls. Socialists to “rebellious” through environmentalists and communists, no left-wing candidate seems, as it stands, capable of reaching the second round of the presidential election. Far from it.
Last week, Yannick Jadot definitely sounded the death knell for a single candidacy yet acclaimed by 85% of left-wing voters, according to an Elabe poll published on December 21. The green candidate returning sharply to his ropes the mayor of Paris, who once again urged him to participate: “When it’s no, it’s no”, he hammered, comparing the tendencies of union of the left to a collective suicide worthy of the sect of the Solar Temple.
“Everyone will therefore wear their colors. It will be more difficult, but the policy has some nice surprises in store”, reacted Anne Hidalgo in Release. Before accusing the MEP EELV of “take a very heavy responsibility “. “The left in confetti is the deadly left. At least we can’t be blamed for not having tried, says Patrick Kanner to franceinfo. Now, we know that there will be no primary on the left, it’s over “, concedes, annoyed, the president of the Socialist group in the Senate.
Among environmentalists, however, not everyone saw the idea of a union of the left with a bad eye, starting with Sandrine Rousseau, the unfortunate finalist of the green primary. “The non-participation in a primary of the left was decided democratically with the victory of Yannick Jadot during our internal primary. We must respect this choice”, she explains to franceinfo, while admitting that this decision could leave traces with part of the potential electorate of the candidate of the Greens.
“We will also have to heal very quickly the wound caused to our voters by this impossible union on the left.”
Sandrine Rousseau, former candidate for the ecological primaryto franceinfo
Despite the phone calls and even several meetings between the relatives of Anne Hidalgo and Yannick Jadot throughout the month of December, there will therefore be no common ground. According to several socialist tenors, if the MEP EELV rejected en bloc this idea of a primary on the left, it is above all because the Greens have “a strategy of definitive elimination of the PS”. According to a socialist deputy, “the environmentalists are in a hard line, they want to gain the upper hand over the PS and kill it”. Another parliamentarian goes even further and suspects the Greens of focusing only on “their number of candidates for legislative elections” and on “the money that they will be able to recover in the event of victory in the constituencies”.
In the entourage of Yannick Jadot, the justifications are very different. His supporters remind us that the candidate has already won a citizen primary and that his program has already been drawn up. “Yannick proposed to Anne Hidalgo to be his Prime Minister and she refused. We think above all that she launched this idea of primary to try to find a way out of her calamitous campaign and to forget her catastrophic polls“, sharply tackles a member of the Green candidate’s campaign team.
The door closed by Yannick Jadot, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has been slammed for a long time. The former socialist minister of Lionel Jospin and candidate for the third time in the presidential election does not want to hear about this primary. For him, there are too many programmatic differences with the other teams on the left. And less than 100 days before the presidential election, “he is not serious” to want to develop a common political project.
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The candidate of La France insoumise, who recently described Anne Hidalgo as “François Hollande in worse”, also ensures that, in the political history of the Fifth Republic, the left was never united in the first round when it won. “In 1981, François Mitterrand won when there was a communist candidate [Georges Marchais] against him, while we were in the union of the left against him “, he explained on January 3 on France Inter.
Among his loyal supporters, we also advance other arguments. In the first place, that of the polls. “No one on the left can say today that he is better placed than us. We are the only list on the left to be able to reach the second round because we are the only force capable of bringing together the popular electorate and the middle classes “, launches LFI deputy Eric Coquerel. Confident in the chances of victory of his champion (who emerges on average around 10 or 11% in the latest polls), the parliamentarian of Seine-Saint-Denis also recalls that Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not “in principle against the assembly” and that he continues to reach out to his partners on the left.
“I think that components of the Greens and the PS will join us. Things can happen between now and the first round of the presidential election … We continue to tell Fabien Roussel [le candidat communiste] to join us. “
Eric Coquerel, LFI deputy for Seine-Saint-Denisto franceinfo
On the side of the Communist Party precisely, the primary is also a big “no”. For the candidate Fabien Roussel, “we will not find hope on the left by solving a problem of person or name”. According to the candidate credited with 3% of voting intentions in the polls, “if Anne Hidalgo and Arnaud Montebourg [qui soutient la proposition de la maire de Paris] doubt their candidacy, let them come and join us “.
Faced with the failure of the primary in Hidalgo sauce, all eyes are therefore on the popular Primary. But can this system of citizen arbitration really allow a divided left to mend it? In Christiane Taubira’s entourage, we are convinced that this process is one of the last chance. “The battle of January is the battle of union for Christiane Taubira. She prefers the primary to the dead end and she knows that she still has time to rally behind her”, assures the former parliamentarian Christian Paul, who is now piloting the political project of the candidate.
Erwann Binet, former PS deputy who carried the law on marriage for all with the former Minister of Justice during François Hollande’s five-year term, welcomes the choice “beyond parties and egos “ of the former minister. “Christiane Taubira never speaks to say nothing and there, she tells us: ‘If I am not the catalyst for union, I will not go’ “, he tells franceinfo.
>> Presidential 2022: how Christiane Taubira was persuaded to enter the campaign
If Christiane Taubira were to be appointed in this citizen’s ballot, she would however become the eighth candidate from the left in the race for the Elysee, further mortgaging the chances of her camp to reach the second round. For the time being, its ambitions are freshly welcomed by the declared candidates. “Madame Taubira does not catch on in the polls because she has no program and I believe that the French do not vote for a providential figure, but above all for a project and ideas”, judge Eric Coquerel. “Even if she is a great politician, no one will step aside for her benefit. Christiane Taubira wanted to provoke a ‘wow’ effect around her candidacy, but there is no effect at all!”, asserts for his part Patrick Kanner.
Whatever the outcome of the Popular Primary, for which 120,000 voters have so far confirmed their participation, a rallying behind the winner appears very hypothetical. “The idea of this Popular Primary is laudable, but I wonder how this community will evolve if there is no union. Do you really believe that we can force these free citizens to campaign? for the winner of this primary? Of course not, they will do what they want and they will be quite right “, loose a relative of Yannick Jadot.
“Sf January 30, Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Yannick Jadot win, and even if they were bad players with us, we will still be very determined to campaign for them, these are the rules of the Primary People “, try to reassure Samuel Grzybowski, the young spokesperson for the Popular Primary, who hopes to attract 300,000 voters.
While waiting for this decisive meeting, the five main left-wing candidates and Christiane Taubira continue to lead their campaign, each in their own corner. Jean-Luc Mélenchon will for example be meeting in Nantes on Sunday. Anne Hidalgo will present her full program on Thursday, before a meeting in Paris on January 22. Yannick Jadot will wait for his part on the 29th to lift the veil on the environmentalists’ final project. As for the almost candidate Christiane Taubira, she intends to increase the number of trips throughout the country.