After failing to convince the main left-wing candidates of their legitimacy, following having watched helplessly as Christiane Taubira’s candidacy failed in the face of the challenge of gathering 500 sponsorships, the team at the initiative of the Popular Primary decided, Saturday, January 5, to support a candidate who has multiplied the criticism once morest them: Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
In a press release, posted on saturdaythe board of directors of the “2022 or Never” association (which organized the ballot in which 392,000 people participated) explains that it organized a majority judgment vote between “volunteers, local groups, members of the permanent team and the office” at the end of which the People’s Union, a movement set up by La France insoumise for the presidential election, came out on top.
It would be “of the best political vehicle to win our ideas”estimates the text, without mentioning the name of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who for months multiplied the refusals to be associated with the popular Primary, created to bring out a single candidacy on the left before the elections.
“The rules of the democratic game are obsolete”
The former Keeper of the Seals Christiane Taubira had been the only prominent personality to participate voluntarily and had finally won (the names of Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot and Jean-Luc Mélenchon had been registered on the ballots of vote although they firmly ruled out any recognition of the legitimacy of the vote and its result). Since then, the former member of Guyana (whose name is never mentioned in the text) has announced that he is withdrawing his candidacy for lack of sufficient sponsorship for it to be validated by the Constitutional Council.
According to the popular Primary, “the impossibility for the candidate supported by the highest citizen designation of this presidential election to obtain the 500 sponsorships reinforces our finding that the rules of the democratic game are obsolete”. One solution would be, according to the press release, to institute “an IVe Ecological Republic through the organization of a Constituent Assembly to build a project for a social, ecological and truly democratic society”which is precisely what Jean-Luc Mélenchon proposes.
Quoted in the press release, Victor Grezes, spokesperson for the association, specifies that “the Popular Primary brings its support and campaigns under its own colors, until the presidential election, in complete independence, in view of the urgency and without commitment beyond the presidential election. » A way of anticipating a possible rejection of support from La France insoumise.
“We have tried everything” to unite the left, also says the press release, before affirming: “We are acknowledging that the political strategy of unity that we have been carrying out for months has not worked” most “our citizens’ movement, which has aroused the enthusiasm of half a million people, will not stop there. »
