AFP – Emmanuel Macron “fully” assumes his shocking remarks on the unvaccinated, insisted on Friday the outgoing president and quasi-candidate, whom the candidate RN Marine Le Pen accuses of being an “arsonist”, while Eric Zemmour beats the countryside in rural France.
“We can be moved by forms of expression that seem familiar that I fully assume,” said Mr. Macron, once once more setting the pace for the day three days following telling the Parisian wanting to “piss off” those who refuse to get vaccinated once morest Covid-19.
“The real divide of the country is there, when some make of their freedom, which becomes an irresponsibility, a slogan”, he explained during a press conference at the Elysee Palace. “It was my responsibility to sound the alarm a little, he said at the time when the daily average of new contaminations over the last seven days exceeds 200,000.
– Anti-pass mobilized on Saturday –
This new presidential outing on the five million unvaccinated comes the day before national anti-pass demonstrations. The authorities anticipate a rebound in mobilization.
The president’s controversial remarks on Tuesday had triggered a political storm and increased tensions in the National Assembly for the examination of the bill transforming the health pass into a vaccination pass. Adopted in pain, it will arrive Monday in committee in the Senate.
But this episode also allowed him, according to the majority, to say out loud what many French people think softly, and to push the oppositions, right and extreme right in the lead, to their limits, by forcing them to clarify their position vis-à-vis- vis-à-vis the unvaccinated and the vaccination pass.
In Béziers (Hérault), the city of Robert Ménard who has just granted him his sponsorship, Marine Le Pen once once more fired red balls on Emmanuel Macron, described as “arsonist” while “it is in the unity of the country that we resolve crises (…) and not in division “.
“Is Emmanuel Macron using the health crisis to campaign? The answer is yes. Is it useful? The answer is no. Is it effective? The answer is no, ”she hammered.
– “Steal” the presidential election –
The other far-right candidate, Eric Zemmour, was in Eure-et-Loir, a return to the field also following the holiday break, which allows him in particular to seek sponsorship from local elected officials.
He concluded his day with a meeting in Châteaudun, in front of 1,200 people, according to the count of his entourage. “Our political elites have neglected these territories. You were not as connected, as sympathetic as the inhabitants of the suburbs”, quipped Mr. Zemmour during this public meeting.
Throughout the day, he chained the winks supported to the rural “peripheral France” of the “forgotten”, dear to its competitor Marine Le Pen
Asked earlier regarding the words of Emmanuel Macron, he accused him of wanting to “steal this election from the French. He wants to divert the campaign on the Covid so that we do not talk regarding this essential and vital question of identity of France, “he repeated.
On the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon sharply denounced the arguments of Emmanuel Macron. For the LFI candidate, “duties before rights are the feudal monarchy and its subjects. Respect for rights creating duty is the Republic and citizenship”.
The quasi-candidate Christiane Taubira and her environmental rival Yannick Jadot have focused their attacks on the management of the school, where parents of students and teachers are struggling with the health protocol and anti-Covid tests, the first denouncing the “failures” and the second qualifying the Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer of “ball”.
To take control of the tempo of the campaign, the candidate LR Valérie Pécresse had it, Thursday in Provence, affirmed to want to “bring out the Kärcher” to fight once morest insecurity, like the Minister of the Interior not yet president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2005.
Emmanuel Macron’s answer will come on Monday: he will be in Nice on the same theme of security, laying the first stone of the future Police headquarters.
Two new polls on Friday give, in the same order, Emmanuel Macron widely leading the first round, with 25% (BVA for RTL and Orange) or 26% (Ipsos Sopra-Steria for franceinfo and Le Parisien) in front of a trio made up of Marine Le Pen (17%), Valérie Pécresse (16%) and Eric Zemmour (12%).
The left, it, fragmented between five candidates (Anne Hidalgo, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Yannick Jadot, Fabien Roussel and Arnaud Montebourg), remains in low sounding waters, and suspended on the announcement of a possible candidacy of the former Keeper of the Seals Christiane Taubira, expected next week.
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