Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in a meeting in Marseille, said he was convinced of reaching the second round of the presidential election.
“You feel like me”, proclaimed Jean-Luc Mélenchon in front of several thousand people on the Prado in Marseille, convinced that he can qualify and avoid a “low-cost second round” between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
However, the rebellious presidential candidate is still several points in the polls behind the representative of the National Rally. But a poll on Saturday giving a positive dynamic to Mr. Mélenchon and negative to Ms. Le Pen filled the activists present with joy.
“He’s going to be in the second round, I’m not telling you he’s going to be elected”, thus launched a friend to a participant in the walk of about twenty minutes which preceded the meeting.
“We have the possibility of finally stopping the capitalist policies which destroy everything, of finally favoring the interests of the people of our camp, of all those who are struggling to finish the month”, also enthused Rachel Mahé, 37 years old. , speech therapist, with AFP.
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Preparing her stack of Trotskyist newspapers called “L’Egalité”, which she was about to sell, she explained: “It is the broad anti-capitalist candidacy that brings together revolutionaries and reformists. Something can happen and even if we don’t win, our score will do everyone good.”
“We can very well end up a small step from the second round as in 2017, or be there. It will depend on the mobilization of working-class neighborhoods”, underlined for his part Jérôme Martinet, a 38-year-old engineer.
Mobilizing them is an arduous task which Jean-Luc Mélenchon tackled in his meeting, after several weeks of addressing left-wing voters for an “effective vote”.
“I hear those who say ‘It’s all the same, we’re not going to vote’, well, think about it, damn it!”, he exclaimed after a development on the school .
Jean-Luc Mélenchon also displayed his confidence, the echo of his voice bouncing off the buildings facing him, the sea and the Prado beach in the back: “This time you feel like me, we don’t know why , all of a sudden we said to ourselves, ‘We’re going to get there’, on all sides”.
“It’s true, little by little we see the curves getting closer,” he added, in front of a large audience, even if the organizers had this time seen too big on the perimeter, sparse at the back.
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“Marine Le Pen is Macron’s economic program plus contempt for race”
The deputy of Bouches-du-Rhône quipped: “They dreamed of a very quiet election, which would end as usual, on the one hand Mr. Macron, announced for months, on the other side Marine Le Pen So the first round was a kind of administrative formality, (…) we find ourselves in good company for a low-cost second round”.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon put his two rivals in the same bag: “There is a difference, Mr. Macron is Marine Le Pen’s economic program plus class contempt, Marine Le Pen is the economic program of Macron plus contempt for race”.
“Both agree to freeze the SMIC and we to increase it to 1400 euros net, they both agree to lower production taxes, (…) to relaunch nuclear power without a word” , said the Insoumis.
He obviously read the studies which, several months ago, showed the French unenthusiastic about a repeat of the second round of 2017: “Fed up, we want to talk about climate change, education of kids, of the world, eating differently, inventing differently”.
One of his lieutenants, the deputy Eric Coquerel, judged with AFP that the end of the campaign “will be mainly on the social, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the candidate of all equalities”, from the “public service” to the ” fight against discrimination.
He rejoiced: “The five years of Macronism have been such a liberal steamroller that we appear to be all the more unifying, where five years ago we were considered radicals”.