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The leader of La France insoumise came first in the first round of the presidential election in the prefecture of Lot-et-Garonne while Marine Le Pen won the department. Before the second round, the inhabitants express their “disappointment” and their questions about their positioning.
Anger is not seen in the aisles of the farmer’s market in Agen, Lot-et-Garonne. It’s a rainy Wednesday in April, a few dozen residents stroll on the wet concrete, take the time to fill their baskets with white asparagus and garlic. Smiling faces greet each other from afar, sometimes kiss, happily inhale the scent of the first strawberries. Anger can’t be seen, but it can be heard. Three days earlier, Jean-Luc Mélenchon came first in the first round of the presidential election in this city of 30,000 inhabitants, with 26.24% of the vote.
But it was a dark cloud that enveloped the vast majority of Lot-et-Garonne – a department where Marine Le Pen came out on top – transforming Agen into an urban island of rebellious resistance. So inevitably, between the stalls of the producers, we grit our teeth in small groups. Nicolas, a fifty-something actor, blows in front of the flavored oil bottles of his friend Gil: “The extreme right may well be at the gates of power, the left has remained in its apparatus calculations. And now, what do we do?”
Risks
Bernard and Danièle, from the “Agenais Insoumis, human at heart” collective, also say their “disappointment”. Five years that they have been surveying the city, up and down and across, to collect the concerns of local people, explain the philosophy of their movement and detail its proposals. “The people of Age are confronted with very concrete problems linked to the pri…