Final sprint in the presidential election in France one week before the first round. After the outgoing president, Emmanuel Macron, on Saturday, the leader of the radical left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, given in third position in the polls, gathered his troops on Sunday in the South-West, a region historically on the left, and the candidate on the right Valérie Pécresse hers in Paris.
This is the last straight line in this extraordinary campaign hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine. With a major challenge for the 12 contenders for the French presidency: to mobilize their supporters, to seek out the undecided and those tempted by a potentially high abstention.
“Of course” that Emmanuel Macron can lose, said the leader of the deputies of the presidential majority, Christophe Castaner, on Sunday on RMC radio. “It would be a political fault”, an “arrogance”, that “to suggest that an election is folded in advance”.
The last days of the campaign are electrified by a narrowing gap in the polls between Mr. Macron and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen (National Rally), who is surfing on galloping inflation in France and putting the power of purchase at the heart of his campaign.
During a giant partisan rally on Saturday with more social overtones, Mr. Macron called for “general mobilization” against “extremism”.
More than for the first round, where he is still at the top of the voting intentions, the entourage of the presidential candidate is worried about the narrowing of the gap with Mme Le Pen in the second round, several studies giving him the winner with only 53% against 47% for his opponent.
M’s solutionsme Le Pen “are not financed: it would therefore take back with one hand what it gives with the other”, denounced in The Sunday newspaper government spokesman Gabriel Attal.
“Compromise”
Facing remake announced in the second round of the 2017 presidential election, the best-placed left-wing candidate (around 15%), Jean-Luc Mélenchon, hopes to win a ticket in the final.
To achieve this hoped-for rise, he beat the recall on Sunday in Toulouse, in a region historically on the left.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon castigated Emmanuel Macron, a “liberal” who “brought the private sector into the state” with consulting firms like McKinsey.
According to the French Senate, contracts concluded by the State with consulting firms “more than doubled” between 2018 and 2021, reaching a record amount of more than one billion euros in 2021. “McKinsey pocketed the salary of 1200 civil servants, where is the reason, where is the common sense? launched Mr. Mélenchon.
““I am proud”, said Macron, “to have decided on historic investments for the hospital”… This man eliminated 17,000 hospital beds during his five-year term”, further quipped Mr. Mélenchon.
On Sunday, he offered voters a “compromise” with his program and his “character” in order to beat Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
“The left of reality”
But it is far from unanimous within a divided and weakened left, with the ecologist Yannick Jadot given around 5-6%, the communist Fabien Roussel (around 4%) and the socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo given at a historically low level (around 2%).
On the right too, some are already thinking about the future. But Valérie Pécresse, candidate for the Republicans (LR), neck and neck with former far-right polemicist Éric Zemmour (around 10%), was to try to mobilize in a meeting in Paris on Sunday an electorate very courted by her opponents, from the extreme right to the candidate Macron.
During his partisan rally, Mme Pécresse was to develop “the main axes” of his campaign: a great firmness on security, and purchasing power with “10% increase in wages”.
Anne Hidalgo for her part urged during her partisan rally in Paris the left-wing voters tempted by Macron to “return to their family of origin”, “the left of reality”. “If you have leftist ideas, if you are concerned about social issues, justice, solidarity, ecology, you must know it, Emmanuel Macron does not even calculate you! she continued.
For his part, Yannick Jadot estimated on Sunday on the LCI media that Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term was that of “climate denial” and “social regression”.
Mr. Jadot refers to France’s commitment to reduce its CO2 emissions2 by 40% by 2030 compared to 1990. But the “carbon budget” for 2015-2018 has been exceeded, which has earned a conviction from the French State in court in the “case of the century”.
With the political pole of the AFP