An epidemic outbreak, a voluntary shock formula of Emmanuel Macron and here is the Covid-19 that has become central in the presidential campaign. Since the start of the year, the virus has dictated the agenda and has become the variable around which the political offer is organized. The subject is present everywhere. In the National Assembly, in the headquarters, in the street too. Saturday January 8, they were more than 100,000 demonstrators to march once morest the vaccine pass project. A clearly rising gauge following the words of the Head of State assuming“Piss off” the unvaccinated. And the virus is invading the halls of parties. Apology messages are falling on cellphones everywhere. “Good evening everyone, I have just tested positive for Covid-19”… In case of contact or those tested positive, the political teams are grappling with Omicron.
An order of things linked to the powerful wave caused by the SARS-CoV-2 variant. The outcome, too, of the cleavage around the vaccine pass installed by the “Candidate president”. If they want to exist, the oppositions have no other choice but to invest the health field, with more or less clarity. And to put into practice the health principles stated in their speeches.
For several months in fact, the macronists have understood all the profit they might derive from the health crisis to silence the oppositions. To hear them, any criticism of the management of the crisis would be annihilated, on the grounds that “Nobody would do better” than Emmanuel Macron. Even though the pandemic was a drag on the executive during the first wave, in early 2020, the government now sees it as an asset. “No opposition official has succeeded in instilling the idea that he might have represented a credible alternative to the management of the crisis”, summarizes the spokesperson of the government, Gabriel Attal.
Last week, Mr. Macron decided to officially pose as a leader in pro-vaccines. A strategy intended to leave to the extreme right and to Jean-Luc Mélenchon the defense of vaccinosceptics. It is also a way of underlining the inconsistencies of the Les Républicains (LR) party. In the National Assembly, the text aimed at transforming the health pass into a vaccination pass split the LR deputies into three blocks, also divided the Socialists, supporters of compulsory vaccination. In the Senate, the scene might repeat itself.
“A vaccine is not a political bias”
On the left as on the right, everyone refutes the idea that Emmanuel Macron would be the only representative of the vaccinated electorate. Except that he is the only one able to campaign on the management of the crisis. “A vaccine is not a political bias, who gets vaccinated does not become a macronist”, exclaimed the leader of La France insoumise (LFI), Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Wednesday, without departing from a speech of empathy vis-à-vis vaccinosceptics. “Making vaccination a referendum for or once morest Macron is a political mistake”, for his part decided the environmental candidate Yannick Jadot while Christiane Taubira denounced “The choice of contempt, the choice of the permanent fracture of the country”.
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