For some candidates for the Elysee, such as the conservative Valérie Pécresse, the socialist Anne Hidalgo or the current president, the centrist Emmanuel Macron, it is a pure formality. For others, like ultra Éric Zemmour, it can become a nightmare.
In France, the search for 500 signatures of mayors, parliamentarians and deputies in local assemblies is the unavoidable requirement to stand for election to the President of the Republic. It is a way of screening potential applicants to avoid capricious candidacies, publicity hits or simply that dozens of names end up on the ballot.
The constitutionalist Jean-Philippe Derosier, a professor at the University of Lille, explains: “When one aspires to be the first political figure in the country, one must have an anchorage, a representativeness and a territorial repercussion, and in a diversity of territories. And it takes a political scope.
The law requires that the 500 signatures come from a minimum of 30 of the 101 French departments. The candidate cannot concentrate more than 10% of their signatures in a single department. Some 42,000 positions are likely to grant the guarantee.
The signatures for the two-round presidential election next April must be submitted to the Constitutional Council from January 30 and before March 4. The race to secure these supports has begun.
The consolidated parties play with an advantage, although their options to win the presidency are minimal. This is the case of Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris and a candidate for the Socialist Party (PS). In the polls it does not exceed 5% and the Socialists are mired in a deep crisis, but they continue to enjoy local roots that allow them to obtain signatures without difficulty.
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In the opposite situation of Hidalgo is Zemmour, a television talk show host and author of controversial essays without a strong party behind him and with no political experience. In the fall, the polls gave him a vote expectation of 17% and now they have stabilized around 13%, but he is having a hard time convincing mayors and officials to commit to sponsoring him.
Like other candidates, much of Zemmour’s effort is focused on campaigning for endorsements. It’s not easy: on the right, their natural terrain, some prefer to support Pécresse, the candidate of Los Republicanos (LR). Others want to avoid problems: the signatures are public, and he is an uncomfortable figure, both for the condemnations of the talk show host for promoting racial hatred and for his outbursts against Muslims.
The hypothesis that Zemmour, or the left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, or the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, will not reach 500 signatures has led some of these candidates to call for the rules to be relaxed. Proposals have been presented to make the signatures anonymous or to create a kind of signature bank that would help those who have little left to reach 500.
“It is evident that Mélenchon, Zemmour and Le Pen must be able to present themselves”, he declared to The Figaro David Lisnard, Conservative Mayor of Cannes and President of the Association of Mayors of France. “If they couldn’t, there would be a real democratic problem.”
The constitutionalist Derosier defends the system. “It works”, he points out, “because candidates without political-territorial scope do not exceed the threshold. There are always and sometimes they are known”. And he cites former socialist minister Arnaud Montebourg, who has just given up his independent candidacy. Among other reasons, according to Derosier, because it would have been very difficult for him to collect the 500 signatures.
Mélenchon’s problem is that, despite being the leftist candidate with the best position in the polls, his party, La Francia Insumisa (LFI), lacks territorial implantation in the form of mayors or deputies in the regions and departments. In the 2017 and 2012 elections, he had the advantage that the French Communist Party (PCF) did not present a candidate and his local officials gave him the signatures; now the PCF does have a candidate, Fabien Roussel, and he does not seem willing to share them.
Regarding Zemmour, Derosier thinks: “He is not a political leader, he is a polemicist who, I will be harsh but clear, has come to contaminate the democratic debate with his controversial ideas, and the scene of the presidential election is not a theater scene. Zemmour has no business there and it would seem quite logical to me if he didn’t get 500 signatures.”
Zemmour says that he already has about 400 signature promises, a figure similar to that of Mélenchon. Le Pen says he has about 450. “Like many candidates, it’s hard for us, because the system is totally seized,” Le Pen said a few days ago on the BFMTV network. “We spend time and energy instead of devoting them to presenting our projects to the French.”
Conviction of former advisers to Sarkozy for the ‘case of the polls’
Claude Guéant, who between 2007 and 2011 was President Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-hand man at the Elysée Palace and later his Interior Minister, was sentenced this Friday to one year in prison, of which he will have to serve eight months, for the so-called ‘ case of the Elysée soundings’. Guéant, who is already imprisoned for another matter, was found guilty of favoritism in the payment of millions of euros from the public treasury for polls and political advice without public competition. The polls often dealt with the president’s personal life or electoral issues. The beneficiaries of the contracts were his unofficial advisers. Two of them, Patrick Buisson and Paul Giacometti, were sentenced respectively to two years and six months in prison with probation, and to fines of 150,000 and 70,000 euros. Sarkozy, who testified at the trial, was protected by presidential immunity as the events unfolded in the performance of his duties.
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