The statement fell at 8:45 p.m., Thursday, March 3. Lapidary, four lines, the last announcing that “Sandrine Rousseau no longer assumes responsibilities within the environmental campaign.” In other words: that she is excluded from the team of Yannick Jadot, presidential candidate 2022.
The statement is signed by campaign manager, Mounir Satouri, and comes in response to an article published two and a half hours earlier by Le Parisien-Today in France in which Sandrine Rousseau crushed her candidate. His speech is too “blurry”, his campaign lacks a “story”, his judgment in private is very harsh: “our great political strategists are just lame, she says, they crash on everything… It’s a mess”. The unfortunate finalist of the environmental primary complains of not being associated with the campaign, and of not having “never been invited to any trip or meeting”. And even considering the hypothesis that Yannick Jadot ends up under 5% in the first round. Below the campaign expense reimbursement threshold.
These confidences are dynamite. And Sandrine Rousseau may deny them to Agence France Presse, evoking “reported comments, from the hallway”, it’s too late. Decision is taken around Yannick Jadot to register the divorce, and to make it known quickly. 2h25 precisely between the publication of the article and the distribution of the press release from the Jadot team.
In the campaign team, we insisted yesterday on the fact that this is not the first time that Sandrine Rousseau plays it personally; what she does “prevail a personal expression over the collective” to quote Mounir Satouri’s press release. At the end of September, she explained that the price of gasoline had to be increased. It’s the “well done” to Valérie Pécresse after the congress of the right. “Respect for your journey” she wrote on Twitter. More recently, calls from the foot, declarations of love for Christiane Taubira when instructions were passed around Yannick Jadot to hit the former Keeper of the Seals.
“The activists, it drives them crazy, it’s a total lack of respect” judges someone close to Jadot. Matthieu Orphelin, former member of the Jadot team, considers that he “Sandrine Rousseau should have been excluded four months ago”.
But beyond this singularity that she continued to bring to life internally, Sandrine Rousseau is also paying the price for her ambition for the post-presidential period: taking over the management of EELV at the next congress, or even creating her own party. Her sidelining is also timely for those to whom she intended to dispute the leadership.