Guillaume Dominguez, edited by Solène Leroux
modified to
11:18 a.m., April 21, 2022
Wednesday evening, the rebellious camp was obviously not passionate about the debate between the two rounds of the presidential election. “A mess”, writes Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Twitter. “If boredom were deadly, the Macron Le Pen debate would be in the cemetery,” adds Mathilde Panot, president of the La France insoumise group in the National Assembly.
Such a waste.
The country deserved better.
Strongly the third round.#debatmacronlepen
— Jean-Luc Melenchon (@JLMelenchon) April 20, 2022
As for the voters, numbering 7.8 million, there too, the exercise of the debate did not galvanize the troops either. Their vote is however decisive in the second round on Sunday. Europe 1 went to a Parisian bar on Wednesday where a few rebels had gathered.
A “debate of ragpickers”
Glass in hand, Théophile, in his fifties, looks at the huge flat screen fixed to the wall. A convinced Mélenchonist, when asked if he was waiting for the debate to make his choice, the answer is clear: “Not at all”, he assures. “All we hear is all that was expected,” he says. “A kind of debate of ragpickers on small details. There is no political, philosophical vision, it has no interest. We knew it, but we see it.”
A statement shared by Olivia, who also voted Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round. “It’s expected, agreed, these are words,” she says, disillusioned. “There is no embodiment, no vision, no humanity… There is no reality, ultimately.”
The indecision of the vote
Once the debate is over, the balance sheet is therefore quickly made for these voters of rebellious France. It is without conviction that they will vote next Sunday. For Théophile, “it’s either the blank vote or abstention”. On Olivia’s side, “in any case, I will never vote for Le Pen”. She thus hesitates “between not going to vote and possibly going, perhaps, to vote Macron”. A debate which therefore did not fascinate the crowds. They were also more numerous in the bar opposite watch the PSG game.