Under the colors of the “Union populaire”, his new brand, Jean-Luc Mélenchon displays the determination of the long-distance runner. Candidate declared for more than a year already – it was November 8, 2020 -, he is by far the most advanced on the left in the presidential preparations with regular events, concluded by his speeches, and the presentation of his program The Common Future, published on November 18 by Éditions du Seuil.
→ ANALYSIS. Presidential 2022: Jean-Luc Mélenchon seeks to mobilize
This Sunday, December 5, in the business district of La Défense, near Paris, the leader of the rebels wants to take a further step, with a meeting which will serve as a launching pad for a “parliament of the Popular Union” . This advisory body for the main orientations of its campaign should be made up for half of trade unionists, associative activists, artists, intellectuals, as well as yellow vests and actors of the Generation Climate, MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, mobilizing part of the community. youth. This “parliament” will be chaired by the former spokesperson for Attac, Aurélie Found. Thomas Portes, former spokesperson for Génération.s and Sandrine Rousseau during the environmentalist primary, said on Friday to join the ranks of this body.
Program differences with the Communists
Personalities from other parties should also join this campaign body, but their names remain unknown. Will there be Communists among them? Not sure. Four months before the presidential election, the objective of creating a dynamic around a popular pole seems compromised. And the hypothesis of a rapprochement between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Fabien Roussel, the Communist candidate, not on the agenda.
Unlike 2012 and 2017, the national secretary of the PCF did not support his party for the rebellious leader. Leading an active field campaign, he even insisted, on November 30, before the Association of Parliamentary Journalists, on their “Differences” programs concerning the economy, the fight against unemployment, security and nuclear power.
The competition of Eric Zemmour’s meeting
Despite this division, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leading on the left with 10% of the voting intentions, continues to believe the second round of 2022 is within his reach. More than in 2017 where he was ranked fourth, with more than 7 million votes.
“If popular circles participate in this presidential election, they are the ones who will make the decision”, he assured in a message on YouTube on November 18. “Not everything is decided in advance” and “It is possible to obtain this result, if we mobilize”, he added, brandishing his program of « rupture » for non-voters. But no more than the ecologist Yannick Jadot and the socialist Anne Hidalgo, he does not manage, for the moment, to get the left out of his monotonous campaign.
The date of the Defense meeting had been chosen on purpose, December 5, the day after the nomination of the candidate of the Republicans party. Jean-Luc Mélenchon wanted to show his strengths. But he had not foreseen that he would suffer that day from the competition of the first meeting of the far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour, moved from the Zénith to Villepinte, for reasons of safety and capacity. According to the coordinator of La France insoumise, Adrien Quatennens, “There will be two visions of France which will once again be opposed”.
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