Does Jean-Luc Mélenchon constitute the useful vote on the left? While the candidate of La France insoumise (LFI) has gained the upper hand for several weeks over his competitors on the left, he begins to hope for a qualification for the second round. But he was the target of the former President of the Republic, Wednesday March 9, on France Inter. For Francois Hollande, “at some point you have to have a useful president, not just a useful vote”.
The former head of state was responding to a listener wondering regarding the possibility of restoring visibility to the left by voting in the first round of the presidential election for Mr. Mélenchon, while the socialist candidate, Anne Hidalgo, collects only 2.5% of the voting intentions, the communist Fabien Roussel (4.5%) and the ecologist Yannick Jadot (7.5%) once morest 12% for the candidate LFI. According to the latest Ipsos-Sopra Steria survey for ” The world “he is now in fourth position, behind Emmanuel Macron and the two far-right candidates Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour.
Given the dynamics of the LFI candidate, the former socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal estimated in February: “It is obvious that the useful vote on the left is the Mélenchon vote. » A position that François Hollande does not share.
“When I ran for president [en 2012], it was to win the presidential election. It was not to appear”he explained, before launching an anaphora directed this time, not once morest Nicolas Sarkozy, like in 2012but once morest Mr. Mélenchon:
“It wouldn’t be useful to have a president who came out of the Atlantic Alliance, it wouldn’t be useful to have a president who would put Russia and the democratic countries on either side of the table, it wouldn’t be it would not be useful to have a president who would gradually leave Europe, it would not be useful to have a president who wanted to completely change the institutions without anyone knowing what to replace them with. »
” With who ? With Venezuela? North Korea ? »
The former socialist president notably criticized the will of the “rebellious” candidate to leave NATO. “Where the position is more serious on the part of LFI is that we think we can ensure the defense of Europe, of France, without participating in an alliance”, did he estimate. Before wondering regarding the potential alliances that would replace NATO: ” With who ? With Venezuela? North Korea ? »
“It is not a question of entering into a logic of cold war, even if we see block logics, but we must not be falsely innocent or naive. Without having collective security, European defence, national defence, we cannot resist the pressure of authoritarian regimes”he concluded.
In response, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s campaign manager unearthed a speech by François Hollande dating back fourteen years, when the latter was first secretary of the Socialist Party. “In 2008, Hollande was less caricatural and more critical of NATO”, tweeted Manual Bompard.
“NATO is becoming the armed wing of a Western bloc whose main mission is to defend its values everywhere. A kind of substitute for the UN allowing the United States not to act alone”, had declared François Hollande, in this speech given before the National Assembly, before continuing: “France is much more than a Western country. It is a European country and an original country. And if our country remains the friend and ally of the United States, friend does not mean submissive; and allied does not mean aligned. »
