The former Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira should unsurprisingly declare herself a candidate for the presidential election this week, a prospect which did not trigger a “click” and which even seems to further fragment the left three months before the ballot.
“The issue is no longer whether she will run,” Guillaume Lacroix, president of the PRG, Ms Taubira’s former party, told AFP.
Since her promise, in mid-December, to decide before January 15, that is to say next Saturday, Christiane Taubira has made a series of trips. The latest: a solemn declaration, Sunday in Bondy, in Seine-Saint-Denis, where she pledged to respect the “verdict” of the “Popular Primary”.
This only has a “primary” in the name. Indeed, faced with the refusal to participate in it from the ecologist Yannick Jadot, the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the cantor of the “Remontada” Arnaud Montebourg and the Communist Fabien Roussel, the organizers decided to move on to a ” popular nomination “.
Most “left-wing voters want a candidacy for the presidential election. The candidates might have organized themselves between themselves and themselves. It is up to us, citizens, to choose it from now on”, pleads Samuel Grzybowski, one of his spokesperson.
If the platform has more than 300,000 supporters, worried regarding not seeing any left-wing candidacy competing in the polls with the right-wing and Emmanuel Macron, 110,000 of them are specifically registered for the vote which will take place from January 27 to 30. It will give “the most beautiful legitimacy”, according to Christiane Taubira.
Not wishing to appear as a “candidate of more”, she “sends the signal of the one who plays the game” by recognizing the vote, explains Guillaume Lacroix, who adds: “Despite everything, she takes her risk”.
The few polls that have tested it have attributed to it between 2.5% and 7% of the voting intentions, not enough to upset the situation on the left for the moment.
– “One more candidacy” –
And when they cannot ignore it, the candidates scramble to marginalize it, each in their own way. Jean-Luc Mélenchon repeats over and over that the important thing for the left is not “union but mobilization”, in reference to the abstention that awaits it.
Yannick Jadot tirelessly refused to participate in a primary, believing that he had already made this effort by winning the environmental primary in September. “As often, those who speak of rallying are those who have themselves gathered the least,” scribes his entourage on Monday, grouping together as “social democrats” Christiane Taubira, Anne Hidalgo and Arnaud Montebourg.
The socialist mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo for her part holds a ridge line. She is the first, in December, to have asked for the organization of a primary. It is she “who by calling for a primary created the conditions of arrival” of the former minister, ironically a lieutenant of Ms. Taubira.
But Ms. Hidalgo does not support the “popular nomination” now on track, preferring debates between willing candidates and a vote in physical offices.
“Without the presence of Yannick Jadot, this primary is of little interest,” said Jean-François Débat, mayor of Bourg-en-Bresse and close to Ms. Hidalgo. He criticizes Christiane Taubira’s approach: “the advantage is that the primary leads to fewer candidates, not to the addition of an additional candidacy”.
Communist Marie-George Buffet, who spoke out for Jean-Luc Mélenchon several months ago and now pleads for “discussions”, also observes: “in fact Christiane Taubira is for the moment one more candidacy, he there was no click “on his name.
The week promises to be busy. Anne Hidalgo will present her program on Thursday, the same day Yannick Jadot goes to Grenoble to see the mayor Eric Piolle and Jean-Luc Mélenchon holds an important meeting of his campaign, in augmented reality, in Nantes on Sunday.
The probable declaration of candidacy of Ms. Taubira will be part of this schedule where each camp occupies, more than ever, its corridor.
