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Two weeks before the first round of the French presidential elections, the main contenders for the Elysee entered the final stretch of the campaign on Sunday. The current president and candidate for re-election, Emmanuel Macron, called on voters to go to the polls.
The leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon cultivated his aspiration to the second round, the far-right Éric Zemmour claimed to be “the only right-wing candidate”, the environmentalist Yannick Jadot offered himself as the best option. On Sunday, March 27, with the aim of mobilizing their voters and two weeks before the first round, the main presidential candidates got ready for the final stretch of the campaign.
The also far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, whom the polls continue to place as a virtual contender in the second round (17.5% according to a SopraSteria poll on Saturday, March 26), was booed in Guadeloupe, where the recording of a television interview was interrupted by protesters.
Emmanuel Macron, who continues to lead the voting intention with 28.5%, according to SopraSteria, said on France 3 that he was “shocked” by what he considered a “totally unacceptable scene”, while spokesmen for Marine Le Pen denounced the performance of “activists of the extreme left” who had “pushed the candidate quite violently”.
At the Trocadero in Paris, Éric Zemmour, the Reconquista candidate who falls around 10% in the polls and is neck and neck with the LR candidate, Valérie Pécresse, appeared before several thousand people and dozens of French flags as the “only right-winger in this campaign”.
Under a radiant sun, he described Valérie Pécresse as a “centrist, ready to vote for Emmanuel Macron” in the second round, and Marine Le Pen as a “socialist in economic matters”, while the outgoing president, according to him, “is not yet You know whose side you’re on.”
“Low Cost Second Round”
On the left, the LFI candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, accredited with 12% to 15% in the polls, which fuels his hopes of passing the first round, also gathered thousands of people on the Prado beach in Marseilles. He warned against a “low cost second round” between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. “This time they feel like me, we don’t know why, suddenly we said ‘we’re going to get it’, from all sides”, he exclaimed.
At the Zenith in Paris, Yannick Jadot, who arrived by bicycle, attacked Macron who, according to him, “has not stopped blowing on the embers of the division” and showing his “contempt” for the weakest. As for the extreme right, “it is chaos, hatred and pain. We are joy, equality, freedom, fraternity,” said the environmentalist, who intends to relaunch a campaign that is collapsing (6% in the polls).
Emmanuel Macron n’a eu de cesse de souffler sur les braises de la division en méprisant les gilets jaunes, les précaires, les mesures de la convention citoyenne pour le climat, le rapport Borloo sur les banlieues. #ZenithJadot #Jadot2022 pic.twitter.com/625ZilB9Zl
— Yannick Jadot (@yjadot) March 27, 2022
At a meeting in Toulouse, the communist Fabien Roussel denounced the “common program” of “Macron, Zemmour, Le Pen”, dictated, according to him, “by the Medef (the employers’ organization Movement of Companies of France)”, considering that it was “time for the cigars to change their mouths”.
For the LR candidate, Valérie Pécresse, with an intention to vote of 10% in the polls and sick with Covid-19, only a videoconference with militants took place on Sunday.
“Fairness” or “inequality”
As the risk of high abstention looms in the first round on April 10, Emmanuel Macron reminded the French that “the election is the best way to take your options.”
He will return to the field on Monday, in Dijon, to silence critics who accuse him of fleeing the debate, in a campaign suffocated by the Covid-19 crisis and then crushed by the war in Ukraine.
The war has forced all the candidates to position themselves in the last month regarding what is happening in Ukraine, in a country in which international issues are traditionally far from the concerns of voters during presidential elections.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon focused his rally on the situation in Ukraine. “I want to dedicate our meeting to the fight for a ceasefire in Ukraine and the end of the Russian invasion. I do so with the demand that it engage us in a common destiny,” he said on Twitter.
For his part, Yannick Jadot “praised the courage of President (Ukrainian Volodymyr) Zelensky in the face of war crimes.”
Shortly before, Emmanuel Macron had warned on France 3 against an “escalation of words and actions in Ukraine”, after the president of the United States, Joe Biden, called Vladimir Putin a “butcher”, and Marine Le Pen once again insisted on the consequences of the war on the purchasing power of the French.
The entry into force on Monday of the strict rules of the official campaign will put the 12 candidates on an equal footing in the media.
Those who are below 3% of voting intentions also protested on Sunday. Speaking to the French radio station France Inter, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (Debout la France) stated that “equity is a clever word for inequality”, while Jean Lassalle of Let’s Resist! called to “resist against this ferocious system that is a soft dictatorship”, and Nathalie Arthaud (LO) denounced a generalized “pluralism problem” throughout society.
with AFP
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