While the outgoing president has not yet declared himself a candidate for his own succession, he remains at the top of the polls. With 54 days to go before the first round, the campaign is buzzing with betrayals, slips and stink bombs.
In politics, we are never disappointed. As a proof, this presidential election of 2022 gives us to see a tragi-comic show of which we don’t know well if we should laugh or cry. A real boulevard show.
The plot? Simple: who will be selected for the second round? On the evening of April 10, we’ll have a small idea of who’s going to take the cake. With an unbearable suspense: when will Emmanuel Macron declare himself a candidate? This is not the least of the comic devices of this show: the one who is given as the favorite has not yet entered the stage!
In the meantime, the other candidates are gutting each other as best they can and giving the measure of their talent.
Sarko and Balladur in the wings
Among the headliners, Valérie Pécresse, with a hoarse voice, comes to tell us that if her performance was missed at the Zenith, on Sunday, it is because of a sound problem on TV (!) and also because people are “macho”. Well, she says what she wants, but she is not cut out to make speeches. Besides, she won’t make any more.
Sarkozy carefully avoids publicly supporting the LR candidate, unlike Balladur who gives her a friendly support.
To the bowl!
Another twist that feeds the plot is the betrayals. They are numerous, in all camps. The one we least expected in this category is Eric Woerth. The former budget minister of Fillon under Nicolas Sarkozy, a Republican pure and simple, has abandoned Pécresse for Macron, about whom he said he would not care in 2017.
Why such a turnaround? Probably at the request of Sarko, who is playing the Macron card to manage his criminal future (he saw how the justice system treated his friends Guéant and Balkany) and, probably also, because in a war it is better to be on the side of the strongest if one wants to hope for some prebends later on. The mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, and the former secretary of state for health, Nora Berra, have also announced their support for Macron. For the same reasons as Woerth.
Stabbing in the back
As for betrayals, the extreme right is not left out. At Marine le Pen, the stab in the back came from her niece, Marion Maréchal, who said her preference for Eric Zemmour. While the polls give her in second place behind Macron, the candidate of the National Rally accused the blow when the Marseilles lawyer and MEP, Gilbert Collard, and then the MEP Jérôme Rivière, rallied Zemmour. Senator Stéphane Ravier did the same.
Another rallying to Zemmour, that of the number 2 of the Republicans, Guillaume Peltier. Heavy stuff.
As for Eric Zemmour, who is on a par with Valérie Pécresse in the polls (about 15%), his speech remains centered on his obsession: immigration and the great replacement. A little short as a vision of France. This did not prevent him from receiving the encouragement of a former American president, Donald Trump.
We will also note an unacceptable slip of the leader of EELV. On Sunday, Yannick Jadot said that Eric Zemmour “makes the Jew of service for anti-Semites” adding that “the right-wing candidate carries death impulses” and “tries to reconcile a part of France with French Algeria, with Pétain, with anti-Semitism.
These remarks were unanimously condemned.
Dull campaign on the left
On the other side of the spectrum, Christiane Taubira, the latest arrival on the scene, is hardly better at speaking than Pécresse. The former Minister of Justice of François Hollande, to whom we gave a zero score in a previous edition, did not succeed in bringing together the left in perdition. She discredited herself to the point that the PRG, her party, decided to drop the candidate whose scores are close to sea level.
Indeed, on the left, the campaign is dull. Only Jean-Luc Mélenchon exceeds the 10% mark in voting intentions (10.5% exactly according to an Ifop poll. The others are at a loss: 3.5% for the communist candidate Fabien Roussel, 2.5% for the socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo, 5.5% for the green candidate Yannick Jadot, 3% for Christiane Taubira, all the others having barely measurable scores.
There are 54 days left of twists and turns, of blows, of new betrayals that will spice up this campaign. We will laugh on March 4 when the Constitutional Council will announce the sponsorships and thus the official candidates. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The show goes on.