Jean-Luc Mélenchon will give his first meeting on Wednesday December 15 in Guadeloupe, before flying to Martinique where he will hold a public meeting on Saturday. At the same time, Marine Le Pen and Fabien Roussel will be on the plane for Reunion. It has thus become a ritual before each presidential election: around November and December, candidates campaign overseas. For example, in November 2016, Marine Le Pen was going to Reunion Island and Mayotte, before flying to Guyana in December.
Guyana, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Fabien Roussel are coming back since they were there in November. If candidates are rushing overseas at this time of year, it is not just a question of weather or milder temperatures. “This is the time when you have a little more time”, explains an adviser to Fabien Roussel. The moment when the rhythm of the campaign, less intense, makes it possible to plan trips of a week. This is no longer possible from January.
There is also the search for sponsorships. It takes 500 to see his candidacy validated by the Constitutional Council. Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen complain about a difficult quest. We must therefore neglect no voice and no elected, even less in these territories which voted overwhelmingly in 2017 for those who were then presented as “the candidates of anger”. Overseas territories are therefore a large reservoir of elected officials: 17 mayors in Mayotte, 24 in Reunion and 32 in Guadeloupe. In addition to these elected officials, there are departmental and regional advisers, the elected representatives of the assembly of Guyana or Martinique … This represents a lot of people. Even before arriving in Reunion, Marine Le Pen recorded new support, that of the mayor of La Plaine-des-Palmistes Johnny Payet. “I do not exclude that there are others”, says an advisor to the candidate.
Beyond these strategic issues, these trips mainly involve a real programmatic approach. For Fabien Roussel and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, three themes emerge: the health crisis, the social crisis and the environmental crisis. The Communist candidate, who calls for an emergency plan for the overseas territories, will have the opportunity to decline it further in Reunion. The rebellious Mélenchon will talk about his social emergency law, to block the prices of certain products. The latter also intends to highlight one of his great fights: to make water a common good. Monday, the president of the group La France rebellious to the National Assembly, Mathilde Panot, who accompanies her to Guadeloupe, seized the Defender of Rights on the “violation of the right to water” for Guadeloupe. More than one in two is not connected to a sewerage network.
As for Marine Le Pen, she will talk about insecurity and immigration in Réunion and Mayotte, “the new lost territories of the Republic“, she said. Mayotte is an exceptional department in France because the land law is suspended there. A new text, ready by the end of the year and presented to the Council of Ministers at the beginning of 2022, still goes there restrict the conditions of access to nationality, to curb the migration crisis, hence the issue, also, of Marine Le Pen’s visit this week.