This year, will the French presidential campaign be swept away by a bigger issue, the war in Eastern Europe? Already mired in the health crisis, this democratic moment seems to have taken a back seat since the offensive launched on February 24 by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. The deadline for the first round, April 10, is however approaching: Monday, March 7, the President of the Constitutional Council, Laurent Fabius, was thus to make public the final list of candidates.
“The return of the tragic in history”, to use Emmanuel Macron’s expression, crushes everything else. Much to the chagrin of his opponents. “Everything is done to lull public opinion, avoid the confrontation of ideas and projects”, regretted Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the National Rally, Saturday March 5, in Aigues-Mortes (Gard). Before enjoining the Head of State, reports Agence France-Presse, not to attempt to ” to erase ” the presidential election or“to escape the demands of an electoral campaign”, “to report on its balance sheet, to accept the debate of ideas”.
The conflict in Ukraine places the President of the Republic in a unique position and plunges the campaign into the unknown. He defends himself from wanting to dodge the debate. In his campaign video released on Friday, he says he wants “explain, convince, propose, be attacked, criticized, contested, respond to controversy, engage in it myself”. However, “The president must also continue to do his job”, he says. In the home stretch of the campaign, the head of state, who was campaigning without saying so, will now campaign intermittently.
And it is as a candidate that he will go, Monday March 7 at the end of the followingnoon, to Poissy (Yvelines). The campaign will be accordingly, organized day by day. “We can clearly see the strategy of the non-candidate who tries to hide his record and cynically hides behind the international crisis”, Eric Ciotti, one of the “musketeers” of the candidate Les Républicains (LR), Valérie Pécresse, regretted in Chartres on Friday. Hidden, the countryside? “No, but it’s a joke”annoyed the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, Sunday on Europe 1, explaining that the head of state had been attacked for a very long time by his opponents.
The question of credibility becomes central
In reality, war reshuffles the cards of the campaign. Emmanuel Macron starts his with assets in his game. The ability of a candidate to face a serious crisis is more than ever “a fundamental choice criterion”recalls Brice Teinturier, Deputy CEO of Ipsos, in The world of March 7. This is an argument that François Rebsamen, the socialist mayor of Dijon, puts forward in The ParisianSunday, to justify his rallying to the Head of State.
You have 55.72% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
