Anne Hidalgo proposes to organize a primary in order to bring together the different candidates on the left. For now, she has been refused after refusal. Which is not without posing an interesting rhetorical dilemma for its competitors: how to justify not participating in the rally, while admitting that being together is the only way to win? This is not the least of the dilemmas: the pressure is increasing in particular on Yannick Jadot, whose programmatic proximity with Anne Hidalgo is quite clear, and Fabien Roussel, candidate for a Communist Party which had always agreed to join Jean- Luc Mélenchon. Both were brought to justify themselves Tuesday evening: the first on BFMTV, the second on France 2. And, surprisingly, their speeches are similar …
Let’s see what the first one says: “I hear the questions, the calls to rally / The pact that we are proposing, it is open to all democrats, to all progressives / What I want is to build a popular rally.” And what the second says: “Me, from the start, I have worked for the rally / I want to bring together the progressives, the humanists, the socialists / I want to work with the socialists and all the progressives.”
In principle, everything is great. But a few elements of speech put the tip in the ear. On the one hand, these sentences saturated with two words: “me” and “I”. Insofar as we speak of a call for union, from the start, it smells a little scorched. And above all: these sentences all revolve around verbs expressing the intention: I want, I wish, we must, we must. In rhetoric, these are very practical tools, precisely because they make it possible to make major declarations of intention … without ever committing to the conditions of realization. Because, saying what you want to do is good. But if we do not indicate how we intend to do it, it does not have any consequences.
How do they plan to do it? It’s very simple ! “The choice is to present our project to the French”, said one. “There is no option for an environmental candidate to withdraw from the presidential election”, emphasizes the other. It is therefore very clear: the two are willing to make the union, but on the condition that this does not imply withdrawing their candidacy. Union, yes, but behind me …
What about Anne Hidalgo? The mayor of Paris has made concrete proposals. She also explained it in her meeting on Sunday in Perpignan: “I took my responsibility: I offered publicly, sincerely, the only path that allows us to come together today. That of the primary before the first round, and it is first of all because I carry this dream that I also made the decision to act to get out of the nightmare that awaits us. “
She carries a dream, which pushes her to act, to get out of the nightmare that awaits us. But she also says something interesting: “I have publicly proposed the only path that will bring us together: that of the primary. “ Basically, she tells us: “It’s either primary or nothing.” It is to forget a little quickly another possible path, which she passes completely in silence: the one which would have consisted in withdrawing his candidacy, to line up behind Yannick Jadot. I don’t know if this is what should be done, but it would be possible in any case: we are swimming in the middle of a fallacious process, in this case the fallacy of the false dilemma.
Should we conclude from this that union is impossible? Concessions are always possible, with one or the other. But that is precisely what we should be prepared to do: concessions. Because, a negotiation in which neither party agrees to give up anything, it has a name: it is called a conflict. And one thing is certain: from the point of view of the dynamics of the campaign, it is better to four candidates in their corridors, who apply themselves to convince, than four interlocutors who waste their time not getting along.