No is no. The Insoumis firmly asked, this Tuesday evening, the organizers of the Popular Primary to no longer involve their candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in this election in which he refused to participate. “Jean-Luc Mélenchon has never given his agreement to appear in this election: we therefore ask that his name be removed from all physical and digital media” of this primary, writes in a press release Manuel Bompard, campaign director of Jean -Luc Melenchon.
For the Insoumis, this approach is “obviously problematic and insincere”. Manuel Bompard denounces “the deliberately brutal nature of this initiative, without respect for the people involved in this presidential election. Thus, the candidates will be put to the vote without their agreement. Others will not be there, without their opinions either,” he wrote.
For the rebellious, “this vote is therefore akin to a kind of poll without any of the basic rules allowing to guarantee its sincerity to be respected”. ” It’s not acceptable. None of us had access to the voters file and the control commission put in place was dissolved by the organizers,” he said in his press release.
“Permanent harassment”
Manuel Bompard believes that it “is time for the electoral campaign to be rid of these unfair practices which instrumentalize aspirations to rally and have operated for weeks as a permanent harassment once morest the legitimacy of left-wing candidates”. Which, for Manuel Bompard, raises questions “regarding the real political intentions of this organization” with which the Insoumis want to “put themselves clearly at a distance”.
The popular Primary claimed on Tuesday to have crossed the bar of 288,000 registered for the “investiture” vote which will take place from January 27 to 30 to designate the candidate it will support among seven personalities.
This figure is already the highest of the primaries that have taken place, surpassing the environmentalist primary in September (122,000) and the Republican congress in early December (nearly 140,000). But in addition to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the ecologist Yannick Jadot and the socialist Anne Hidalgo refused to participate.
The former Minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira, – declared a presidential candidate on Saturday -, the MEP, Pierre Larrouturou, and the candidates from civil society, Charlotte Marchandise and Anna Agueb-Porterie, meanwhile said that they would comply with the results.
