The popular primary, a citizens’ initiative aimed at deciding between left-wing presidential candidates, claimed a total of 467,000 registrants on Sunday evening, a figure much higher than other primaries, but Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Yannick Jadot and Anne Hidalgo refuse to s submit to it.
Voters, who had until midnight Sunday to register, are invited to vote from January 27 to 30 to designate, among seven personalities on the left, the one who will be supported by the primary. “Our initial goal was to outnumber the Republican primary (140,000). We are surprised by this number. It shows a craze for left-wing voters and ecology, ”said one of the organizers of the primary, Mathilde Imer, to AFP. “It is the biggest process of deciding between candidates in France, it cannot be ignored,” she adds.
The left currently has five main presidential candidates (Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Yannick Jadot, Anne Hidalgo, Fabien Roussel, and Christiane Taubira), without anyone being able to compete with the right and Emmanuel Macron for the first presidential round on April 10.
The number of those registered to vote has accelerated in recent days, allowing this initiative to assert itself far superior to the environmentalist primary in September (122,000), that of the Republicans in early December (nearly 140,000) or the militant sponsorships of Jean-Luc Melenchon (260,000).
But three of the seven candidates refused to recognize the result of the vote: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Yannick Jadot and Anne Hidalgo, and find themselves involved in the ballot despite themselves.
Former Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira – declared a presidential candidate only a week ago – and three lesser candidates, MEP Pierre Larrouturou and two people from civil society Charlotte Marchandise and Anna Agueb-Porterie, have meanwhile said they would comply with the results.
“The games are open. This vote, it will take place, with an electoral body that we do not know but which represents all the families and the tendencies of the left”, assures Samuel Grzybowski, another organizer, who believes that “it can create a dynamic”.
