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French left tries ‘people’s primary’ to pick presidential candidate

A four-day "people's primary", to pick a left-wing candidate for the French presidency from a divided and squabbling field, ends Sunday with doubts remaining that a unifying figure on the left will emerge.

Published: 30 January 2022 16:00 CET
A sticker of French left-wing candidate to the
A sticker of French left-wing candidate to the "people's primary" presidential contest Christiane Taubira is worn on the coat of a supporter as she visits the vineyard of Chateau la Tuilere in Saint-Ciers-de-Canesse, near Bordeaux on January 28, 2022, while campaigning ahead of the April 2022 presidential election. - Multiple left-wing presidential candidates are set to be judged in the "people's primary" contest designed to reduce left-wing presidential candidates. A total of 467 000 people have signed up to take part in the online vote which will see seven designated candidates, five professional politicians and two civil society, ranked on a scale from "very good" to "inadequate". But three major candidates already planed to ignore the result. (Photo by Philippe LOPEZ / AFP)

A total of 467,000 people have signed up to take part in the online vote, which started on Thursday. They have to rank five professional politicians and two civil society candidates on a scale from “very good” to “inadequate”.

Whoever wins the best grades average would be expected to rally all the other candidates and their voters behind them, giving the left a fighting change to unseat President Emmanuel Macron in the April election.

But the exercise, initiated by political activists including environmentalists, feminists and anti-racism groups, has been dogged by
serious drawbacks.

The biggest is the upfront refusal by leading candidates Jean-Luc Melenchon, a hard-left politician, Yannick Jadot, a Green, and Socialist Anne Hidalgo to pay any attention to its result.

“As far as I’m concerned, the popular primary is a non-starter and has been for a while,” Jadot said Saturday, while Melenchon has called the initiative “obscure” and “a farce”.

The best-placed politician to win the grassroots endorsement is former Socialist justice minister Christiane Taubira, who has said she would accept the primary’s verdict.

A win Sunday for the well-liked Taubira could prompt her to declare a formal bid for the presidency.
 
But analysts would not rule out that  Melenchon, Jadot or Hidalgo could still emerge as the winner despite their rejection of the primary, which could lead to more confusion.
 
Polls currently predict that all left-wing candidates will be eliminated in the first round of presidential voting in April.
 
Macron, who has yet to declare his candidacy for re-election, is the favourite to win according to surveys, with the far-right’s Marine Le Pen the likely runner-up.
 
But pollsters warn that the political landscape remains volatile, with the vote’s outcome very difficult to call.

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POLITICS

French far right leader says party ‘ready’ to govern

French far-right leader Jordan Bardella said his party was ready to govern as he pledged to curb immigration and tackle cost-of-living issues ahead of the country's most divisive election in decades.

Published: 24 June 2024 15:09 CEST
French far right leader says party ‘ready’ to govern

“In three words: we are ready,” the 28-year-old  president of the Rassemblement National (RN) told a press conference as he unveiled his party’s programme.

President Emmanuel Macron threw France into turmoil earlier this month by calling the snap election after his centrist party was trounced by RN in a European vote.

Weekend polls suggested the RN would win 35-36 percent in the first round on Sunday, ahead of a left-wing alliance on 27-29.5 percent and Macron’s centrists in third on 19.5-22 percent.

Bardella, credited with helping the RN clean up its extremist image, has urged voters to give the eurosceptic party an outright majority to allow it to implement its anti-immigration, law-and-order programme.

“Seven long years of Macronism has weakened the country,” he said, vowing to boost purchasing power, ‘restore order’ and change the law to make it easier to deport foreigners convicted of crimes.

He reiterated plans to tighten borders and make it harder for foreigners born on French soil to gain citizenship.

“It’s been 30 years the French have not been listened to on this subject,” he said.

Bardella added that the RN would focus on ‘realistic’ measures to curb inflation, primarily by cutting energy taxes.

He also promised a disciplinary ‘big bang’ in schools, including a ban on mobile phones and trialling the introduction of school uniforms, a proposal previously put forward by Macron.

On foreign policy, Bardella said the RN opposed sending French troops into Ukraine – as mooted by Macron – but would continue to provide logistical and material support.

He said his party, which had close ties to Russia before its invasion of Ukraine, would be ‘extremely vigilant’ in the face of Moscow’s attempts to interfere in French affairs.

The election is shaping up as a showdown between the RN and the leftist New Popular Front, which is dominated by the hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI).

The New Popular Front has so far refused to publicly declare its candidate for prime minister if it wins, with several key figures urging the polarising LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon to step back.

Bardella claimed the RN, which mainstream parties have in the past united to block, was now the ‘patriotic and republican’ choice faced with what he alleged was the anti-Semitism of Mélenchon’s party.

FLI, which vocally opposes Israel’s war in Gaza and refused to label the October 7th Hamas attacks as ‘terrorism’, strongly denies the charges of anti-Semitism.

In calling an election in just three weeks Macron hoped to trip up his opponents and catch them unprepared.

But analysts have warned the move could backfire spectacularly if the deeply unpopular president is forced to share power with a prime minister from an opposing party.

Marine Le Pen, the RN’s figurehead who is bidding to succeed him as president, has called on him to step aside if he loses control of parliament.

Macron has insisted he will not resign before the end of his second term in 2027 but has vowed to heed voters’ concerns and change course.

“The goal cannot be to just continue as things were,” Macron said in an open letter in French media.

He has urged the French not to make the election a referendum on his leadership, saying it is not, ‘a vote of confidence in the president of the republic’.

On Tuesday, Macron’s prime minister Gabriel Attal will go head-to-head with Bardella in a TV debate.

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