Jean Castex is meeting this Tuesday morning a commission which will be responsible, in a Covid context, for working on the conditions under which the presidential campaign can take place. And this while Emmanuel Macron has still not declared himself. The political columnist Nicolas Beytout gives us his analysis of the situation and deciphers the strategy of the Head of State.
In full fiction
“The virus and its various variants have not ceased to amaze us. Who could have predicted one day that the Prime Minister would undertake to receive the creator of Espoir RIC, the leader of the Animalists, or a transgender mayor or the representative of the obscure Refoundation 2022 to ask them their opinion on the presidential election? Yet this is what will happen, shortly, since the leaders of political parties are invited to this meeting (that, that is usual), but also all those who have already declared themselves candidates for the Elysee (they are about thirty). At the very least, they should be around forty.
But, warning to all those who dream one day of treading the parquet floor of Matignon and sitting in the large living room to give their opinion on the march of the world and the elections, this meeting will be held mainly by videoconference (thank you Omicron ). And then, message to all those who would like to quickly announce their candidacy to have the pleasure and the honor of a discussion on the institutions with Jean Castex, sorry, but the list of participants is closed. Too late.
On the part of the government, this desire to broadly associate those who are involved in the election, it is however a good thing. Except that we will be in full fiction. At the Elysée, we are fully aware of the importance and the responsibility of power in the smooth running of this great democratic meeting that will be the campaign. It was therefore decided to seek a consensus by associating the greatest number of contenders for the Elysée with the decisions to come. The real ones and the fake ones, the serious ones and the bogus ones (I let everyone do their own sorting). First fiction, therefore, is the idea of reaching a consensus between people who have neither the same agenda nor the same objectives.
Don’t campaign on your track record
Every opinion counts, of course, but objectively, some count more than others. Another fiction: the commission will work on the methods of the vote without there being, for 5 years, the least innovation on more modern tools like the vote on Internet or the postal vote. Finally, last fiction, a candidate will be missing later, and not least, Emmanuel Macron, who has still not officially declared himself.
But that did not prevent him, on Monday, from making a 100% electoral trip to Nice and in the La Roya valley, nor from multiplying the promises for the next 5 to 10 years: security budget increased by 15 billion, doubling of number of police officers in the field, fight against insecurity on a daily basis. From the memory of a collaborator of the President of the Republic candidate for a second term, we had never seen that at this level. One of them pointed out to me that this choice of Emmanuel Macron was quite risky: because to promise everything at the last moment of a five-year term is also to demonstrate that it has not been done. before. It is to put the spotlight on the impasses of the ending mandate.
This is the whole difficulty of the strategy chosen by the Head of State: not to campaign on one’s balance sheet (one cannot win on one’s balance sheet, but one can lose, we recognize at the Elysée); therefore no balance sheet, no program of rupture either, but a continuity, the attempt of a sequence of the two mandates with announcements which go far beyond the month of April and the presidential caesura. Obviously, with such a state of mind, the meeting at Matignon on the material conditions of the campaign is only a detail and can perfectly be skipped.