“Voting between different dead ends, that never made a boulevard”, declared Julien Bayou, EELV national secretary, Thursday, December 9 on franceinfo, reacting to the primary on the left proposed Wednesday by the socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo. Yannick Jadot will not go, “obviously”, said Julien Bayou, because “we have already done a primary”. According to him, the proposal of the mayor of Paris is a “do-it-yourself” who “looks more like the dressing of a withdrawal”.
>> How do we react on the left to Anne Hidalgo’s proposal for a primary on the left? Follow our live.
franceinfo: Are you up for a primary on the left?
Julien Bayou: No. I saw this proposal, which is a bit absurd, as a sort of dress-up ploy, maybe a withdrawal. The candidate notices the impasse in which her candidacy is. We had the Socialist President François Hollande, who had given up standing for lack of a record, and there a socialist candidate who notes that social democracy cannot be the driving force for the coming five-year term on issues of climate, justice social, democratic. So she is clearly improvising, it seems, since she apparently didn’t warn anyone. Neither I nor even the Socialists, apparently. And then she said, even the opposite, a few days before. This is not serious. The primary, it took place. We have adopted a project, we environmentalists. Yannick Jadot worked at the rally. Today, we are gathered in support of Yannick Jadot’s candidacy. The ecological project is the new business of the century.
So, Yannick Jadot will not go in a new primary on the left?
Obviously not. We are perfectly aligned. We already did a primary. Voting between different dead ends, as this affair seems to be organized, never made a big difference. What unites is clarity, it is consistency. I have already said that I was ready to work for a rally, but on the condition that there are structuring measures that shape a future for the country.
Would you rather lose each in your own corner rather than try to win together?
There are only three projects on the table, really. There is the past, the present and the future. The past is this extreme reactionary who pits the French against each other. It is the specter of civil war. It is this fantasized past of an Algeria that would become French again, where women would stay at home. There are the Conservatives. It’s Valérie Pécresse, it’s Emmanuel Macron. It is ultimately to change everything so as not to change anything. It is health considered as a commodity. It is not to act against climate change. And then there is the project for the future, it is ecology. All families revolve around these three different offers. Ecology is Yannick Jadot. We organized the primary after discussing the project. This pre-campaign, it allows to install this idea, ecology, humanism. I only hear Yannick Jadot who assumes humanism, who assumes fraternity in this country. We are in the process of installing this campaign. It’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint. You will see that on the day of submitting applications, there will not be all of these applications. Not all of them will go to the end. In any case, the kind of improvisation and DIY of the socialist candidate, from my point of view, it looks more like the dressing of a withdrawal.