The presidential candidates were this weekend dispersed to the four corners of France to win the vote of the French.
In difficulty since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Éric Zemmour is counting on the announced rallying of Marion Maréchal during a meeting on Sunday in Toulon to revive himself, when Jean-Luc Mélenchon will reconnect with high masses in the open air. , In Lyon. The former polemicist plays big with this new meeting organized at 5:00 p.m. at the Zenith of Toulon where 8,000 people are expected.
In the morning, at the option of the stands of a Provençal market in the Mourillon district, the candidate Reconquête! promised to “come soon” to power to supporters who shouted their impatience at him. In front of the “L’amalgame” bar, glass of rosé in hand after having chained olives, strawberries and clementines, he especially wanted to put into perspective a persistent drop in the survey, considering that the studies were “very varied”, while a passer-by confided to appreciating “his outspokenness”, despite “a little stiff ideas”. A warm-up before the high point of the afternoon and the formalization of the rallying of Marion Maréchal, niece of her rival Marine Le Pen and former FN deputy for Vaucluse, presented as a “turning point” in the campaign.
The granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen must speak after Stéphane Ravier (ex-RN) and Guillaume Peltier (ex-LR). In addition to “reassuring the electorate of LR” and “raising reluctance” among women, it is a question of “illustrating the union of the rights”, according to Nicolas Bay, also ex-RN who passed through the Zemmour camp. “But what is the union of the rights?” Questioned Sunday morning on FranceInfo the director of communications for Valérie Pécresse, Geoffroy Didier. “For the moment, Éric Zemmour is achieving only one thing: it is the fusion of the extreme right”, he tackled, ironically, about Ms. Maréchal: “So young and already unfaithful … It’s sad”.
Zemmour and the oligarch
For Marine Le Pen, the blow is hard, she who recalls having “raised” Marion Maréchal, 32, “during the first years of her life”, insisting on the “personal aspect” of this announced betrayal, “brutal, violent”. The one who is running for the Elysée for the third time sends her niece back to her statements in the fall, when she swore that she would support “the best placed” on the far right. However, Marine Le Pen is ahead of the former Figaro journalist in all the polls.
Can the support of Ms. Maréchal allow the former polemicist to reverse the curves, while Eric Zemmour is struggling to get out of a complicated sequence on the conflict in Ukraine? Criticized for his pro-Russian tropism of the past, he was again put in difficulty this weekend after the revelation by Le Monde and the JDD of links with the ex-president of the Russian Railways Company, Vladimir Yakunin.
Mr. Zemmour’s entourage first disputed, then finally admitted that the candidate had lunched with the influential oligarch in 2015, before a new interview the following year, referring to “simple meetings”. His wish that Ukrainian refugees be welcomed in Poland rather than in France also sparked a “discussion” within his campaign team, even if “there are no substantive differences”, underlines an executive, but “on the shape, it could have been a little more rounded”.
Mélenchon’s “geopolitical vision”
On the other side of the chessboard, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in the lead in the voting intentions among the left-wing candidates, also wants to make people forget his declarations judging the Russian attack against Ukraine impossible. A “mistake”, he himself admitted.
His environmentalist competitors Yannick Jadot and socialist Anne Hidalgo, present at the big Parisian demonstration on Saturday for Ukraine, attributed to him complacency vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin and criticized his opposition to the delivery of arms to the Ukrainians.
Can the sequence dissuade the left-wing electorate likely to vote “useful”? MP Alexis Corbière wants to be “optimistic” and assures that the meeting in Lyon will remove doubts by “offering a geopolitical vision”. His colleagues Adrien Quatennens or Éric Coquerel posted videos on social networks to call for filling the crowd expected on Sunday on the Lyon esplanade of the Gros Caillou. Objective: to reconnect with the spectacular images of the candidate’s outdoor meetings in 2017, described as “demonstrations of force” by the Insoumis in chief. Target number one: Emmanuel Macron, now a candidate, who prances at the top of the voting intentions.
On Saturday, the LR candidate Valérie Pécresse, in a meeting in Metz, castigated a five-year term in the form of “filing for bankruptcy”, marked by a “safe Waterloo”. Marine Le Pen for her part deplored that everything was “done to lull public opinion”. Especially since in macronie, we seem to rule out the idea of a debate between the outgoing president and his 10 other competitors, or even 11 if the candidacy of Philippe Poutou is confirmed on Monday by the Constitutional Council.
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