Covid, presidential, global governance … The promises and challenges of 2022

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“Whoever thinks of forgetting remembers,” said Montaigne. However, many of us would want to bury the storms of 2021 in the depths of our memories: the health crisis, the Zemmourian contamination of minds, the dramatic return of the Taliban to Afghanistan, not to mention, for fans of the round ball, the premature exit. of the Blues of the Euro …

Arrives 2022 and its new promises. That, of course, of seeing the threat of Covid finally recede, but how can we be sure? Wouldn’t it be time, as we begin season 3 of this planetary pandemic, to look beyond our borders, by focusing on more international solidarity in the distribution of vaccines? Otherwise, in 2022, new variants will emerge, which might prove to be more dangerous than Omicron.

The promise of peaceful world governance has fizzled out. Remember: just a year ago, the West was shaking when it saw the grotesque and disturbing images of the attack on the Capitol by the pro-Trumpian filibuster. The factions finally pushed back, it is with a sigh of relief that the international community saw Joe Biden succeed Donald Trump in the White House. An old man, certainly, but a true democrat, experienced in the exercise of power and who had come to put an end to four years of noises, compulsive tweets and hazardous posturing, we were reassured at the time. In short, the United States became the United States once more. Except that, following only barely a year in power, the Biden effect has already made a splash: the disappointment is such that, on the occasion of the fall 2022 elections, America might reconnect with a pro-Trump majority. . At a time when Vladimir Putin is struggling to trample on the last civil liberties in Russia, when Xi Jinping is preparing to celebrate his ten years at the head of China with the firm desire to keep his post of Grand Helmsman, the dream of a peaceful diplomacy is already buried.

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This is to say if, in 2022, the followers of liberal democracy risk once once more finding themselves weakened, in a world dominated by authoritarian regimes. They will not forget that exactly one hundred years ago Stalin succeeded Lenin, and Russia was transformed into the Soviet Union, while in Italy Mussolini marched on Rome and imposed fascism in Italy.

In France, a presidential election more open than ever

The French, for their part, will not necessarily have their eyes riveted on the past when they go and cast their ballots next April to choose their future president. And, democratic magic, while for months the games seemed made, the election queen of the Fifth Republic seems more open than ever. In recent weeks, the surprise rise of Valérie Pécresse has turned upside down the announced scenario of a new tête-à-tête Macron-Le Pen, while the sounding swings of Eric Zemmour and the flat encephalogram of the left continue to recompose the French political magma.

L’Express will guide you throughout this campaign to decipher the nature of the challenges for our country, as well as the different strategies of the candidates. Because the shopping list that the future president will find is endless. What place for France in this world full of new threats? What new growth drivers for an economy in digital and ecological transformation? What hopes for the younger generations, worn out by two years of Covid and of eroded freedoms? How to reform the school and the hospital, two rickety institutions and yet at the heart of our republican pact?

In 2017, the candidate Emmanuel Macron promised “the revolution”. Crisis of the yellow vests, social movements, health shock: in recent years, it has indeed floated on France a scent of “worrying, tumult and inconsistency”, to plagiarize General de Gaulle. However, Emmanuel Macron will not stop wanting to modernize France during this five-year term. Not without clumsiness, as he himself admitted. Unfortunately, this energy put at the service of his country did not however allow him to mend the snags of the French Republican mantle. Nor to put an end to this attraction for radicalism, to the fierce resistance of the antivax or to the conspiratorial sling … With less than four months of the next electoral deadlines, France still looks like a big bubbling cauldron. “The French, wherever they look for them, need the marvelous”, predicted a certain Charles de Gaulle in 1932 *. A sentence that candidates on the road to the Elysée should remember not to forget …

The entire L’Express editorial team sends you its best wishes for health and happiness for the year 2022!