“You have friends here, but it’s not the friends that count, we are here as fellow citizens.” In Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), François Bayrou sets the tone for the meeting. Three weeks before the first round of the presidential election, candidate Emmanuel Macron traveled on Friday March 18 to the lands of his MoDem ally to meet supporters, but also a dozen readers of the regional daily press chosen by local journalists.
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Newspapers The Republic of the Pyrenees and South West launched at the beginning of the week an appeal to their readers to ask questions to the president in the campaign, the day after the presentation of his program. The format is intended as a response to the criticisms expressed at the end of the last meeting organized in Poissy (Yvelines). During this very organized conversation, Emmanuel Macron remained in his comfort zone, giving the impression of answering questions from citizens committed to his cause. The Head of State, who arouses the anger of the other candidates by refusing to debate before the first round, wanted to show that he was truly entering the campaign.
To do this, in Pau, local journalists collected 240 questions on their website and kept twelve from the most recurrent themes. “I stumbled upon it a bit by chance and I gave it a shot, but it was a bit of a joke”, says Anna Katarina, an 18-year-old high school student who was selected to ask a question. The journalists also demanded to be able to moderate the debate between Emmanuel Macron and the readers. “It’s a very original format, with the idea of finding spontaneity in this exchange”, says MoDem MEP Laurence Farreng, who organized the event. “The press has complete independence over the choice of readers and questions.”
“This ‘facing the readers’ is marked by impartiality, there has been no exchange with the readers, they will express themselves freely.”
François Bayrou, president of the Modemin Pau
Around 11 a.m., the few hundred chairs in the hall of the Palais Beaumont (500, according to candidate Macron’s campaign team) begin to fill up. For their part, the journalists of the local press welcome in the hall the twelve French people who have to ask a question. “We go over the questions again and then we tell them how it’s going to go, we reassure them. The idea is to put them in the best possible positionexplains a journalist from South West. We must also refine the questions, with the program unveiled yesterday.
“These are questions that arise from daily difficulties. They are not asked for their political color, but there are not only macronists.”
A journalist from the daily “Sud Ouest”at franceinfo
Arrived with a good half hour of delaythe candidate Macron then lends himself to the game of questions, a little shaken on purchasing power or on the climate. “You have given in to big capitalism (…) The climate emergency is there, what are you going to do?”, asks in particular Anna Katarina, member of Youth for Climate and who stands up to the Head of State. Emmanuel Macron tries to convince her by evoking the electrification of our modes of transport, the renovation of our housing or the development of nuclear and renewable energy to fight against climate change. “We’ll all get on with it. I need you.”
Emmanuel Macron was able to sketch the lines of the second five-year term that he is requesting from the French. In turn, he answered questions on relocations, teleworking, medical deserts, dependency, agriculture, discrimination… Each time defending the results of his action before explaining how he could go further in the next five years.
On purchasing power, he reiterated why he was not in favor of a boost. “If we increase it even further, the risk is to destroy jobs. We will destroy low-skilled jobs and we will destroy competitiveness”he said. He also returned to the new pension reform he is proposing, with a retirement age of 65 and the abolition of special schemes. She will “less messy” than the one (aborted) in 2020, assured the president-candidate.
“The universal system [de retraite]it changed the rules too much, it was too anxiety-inducing.”
As during the major debates, the President of the Republic once again showed himself at ease in this question-and-answer exercise, which lasted nearly two and a half hours. Well helped, all the same, by a public mostly won over to his cause. “I voted for him and I will vote for him again, because intellectually he holds up”confides Brigitte, 74 years old. “We come as supporters, because we want to hear it and see it”adds a couple placed a few rows ahead.
“I thought it was a great sequence”, welcomed François Bayrou at the end of the exchange. Even if the room was gradually depopulated, a good part of the public remained until the end of the event to try to take a photo of the Head of State.
Finally, the candidate Macron put on his army chief’s costume to talk about the situation in Ukraine. “We must do everything to stop this war”declared the Head of State, referring to the “humanitarian drama” In progress. The people of Pau who came to meet him appreciated it. “I found it convincing!”exclaims Julien. “He has punch, he is combative, but he hasn’t announced much new”nuance his neighbor.
As for the readers of the local press who came to ask questions, not everyone was convinced. “He clearly didn’t answer my question about the climate emergency, there was nothing concrete,” says Anna Katarina. “But hey, it helps to put the debates. I tickled him a little and it’s still important to talk to each other, even when we don’t agree.”