Divisive and provocative, President Emmanuel Macron, claiming to want to “piss off the unvaccinated”, chose to stick to the exasperation of a large part of the French in a context of runaway epidemic, and to throw the oil on the fire of an already electric election campaign.
Unsurprisingly, the head of state’s rude words to some 10% of unvaccinated French people sparked an uproar in opposition and fueled the storm around the vaccine passport currently being debated in the Assembly.
“I was outraged by the president’s remarks,” launched the right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse, while on the far right, Marine Le Pen denounced “the vulgarity and violence” of Mr. Macron and that Eric Zemmour, author of a resounding middle finger last month, castigated a “admitted and accepted cruelty”. The candidate of the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon saw it as a “staggering confession” and the Communist Fabien Roussel castigated a “unworthy and irresponsible” statement.
“The unvaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And so we will continue to do so, until the end. That’s the strategy, ”said Mr. Macron in an interview with the readers of the daily Le Parisien published Tuesday evening.
Concerned at the start of the vaccination campaign to spare the most reluctant, the Head of State no longer takes gloves.
The Covid-19 epidemic is on the rise (some 271,000 cases on Tuesday), the intensive care units are mostly filled with unvaccinated people and the anger of caregivers and patients whose care is delayed is expressed more and more openly .
“When my freedom threatens the freedom of others, I become irresponsible. An irresponsible person is no longer a citizen ”, added the Head of State in another shocking formula – and considered much more problematic – which made the opposition jump.
“In 2016, Emmanuel Macron refused the forfeiture of nationality for Islamist terrorists […] There, the unvaccinated would be more dangerous than terrorists? », Launched Eric Ciotti, adviser to the right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse.
“President Macron therefore considers that 5 million French people are no longer citizens,” said member of the radical left Clémentine Autain.
Risky strategy
The incendiary remarks of the Head of State – who had recently promised not to give in to the temptation of short sentences – come three months before the presidential election, in which he “wants” to participate, he told the Parisian, without yet formalizing his candidacy, and while the polls give him the winner.
For most analysts, this output is calculated. “I do not believe for a single second that it has not been thought through”, comments for AFP Emeric Bréhier, of the Jean Jaurès foundation. “He made the obvious choice to address the 90% of French people vaccinated, he knows very well that the others will not vote for him”.
“In addition, there are many other things in his interview, on Europe, nuclear… But the buzz around his cavalier formulation wins out,” he laments.
“This calculation is accompanied by risk-taking. This radicalism leads to a controversy over its authoritarian and dictatorial side which its opponents have already made their own. It is a bet of the first round of the presidential campaign: we seek to homogenize its electorate, more to fix it than to enlarge it, ”analyzes political scientist Jean Garrigues.
Other analysts, on the other hand, do not hide their amazement. “I find it difficult to understand the terms used by the president. By his words, he makes his task more difficult, which is to convince the diehards. By ostracizing these four to five million French people, he will radicalize them, ”political scientist Pascal Perrineau told AFP.
“These are not these erratic attitudes that will bring citizens to the polls,” he laments, while the specter of abstention hangs over the presidential election of 2022.
Mr. Macron’s remarks also intervene in a campaign marked by invectives, anathemas and daily controversies on all subjects, the most recent being that on the European flag installed under the Arc de Triomphe.