The former Keeper of the Seals and a time candidate Christiane Taubira called, on Friday in a press release, to vote Jean-Luc Mélenchon for the presidency to “bar the road” to the far right, whose “accession to power” is in his eyes “a risk to which we cannot accept”.
“Jean-Luc Mélenchon will have my vote”
With Marine Le Pen in a position to qualify for the second round, followed by a possible close duel against Emmanuel Macron, “the prospect becomes plausible” of the far right coming to power, explains Ms. Taubira. To eliminate him “from the first round”, “the left-wing candidate in a position to do so today is Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Sunday, he will have my vote”, she concludes about the Insoumis, third in polls.
In passing, she scratches the disunity of the left that she had said she wanted to ward off by presenting herself at the “Popular Primary”. “This electoral scenario was predictable in recent months. The whole left knew it. A necessary rally required efforts so that the left and ecology were not eliminated in the first round.”
Vote “effective”
Christiane Taubira had withdrawn from the presidential race at the beginning of March, recording the failure of her campaign despite her victory in the “Popular Primary” at the end of January. She had promised to make her vote public before the first round.
It is now done, in a context where the Insoumis are calling for an “effective” vote for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, driven by a dynamic in recent weeks which has brought him between 16 and 18% in the polls. But Marine Le Pen, herself on the rise over the same period, is ahead of him by several points, as is outgoing President Emmanuel Macron.