Paris – It seemed like a foregone election but now we discover, a few hours before the vote, that everything is up for discussion and we don’t know who will win. It seemed like an appointment without history and without risk, but we realize instead that the future of France and Europe depend on the outcome of this vote. Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen. The leader who defends Europe and wants to strengthen it, against the Joan of Arc of identity and populist nationalism.
Elections France 2022: candidates, programs and dates
“Le Pen? So Europe would be shattered”
On the eve of first round polls attribute 26.5% to Macron and 24% to Marine. Two and a half points of detachment: a “fork” so small as to make all scenarios possible in view of the final test in the second round, Sunday 24 April. It was a strange, bloodless, voiceless campaign. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have deprived candidates of visibility. The malaise that has been felt in the country since the days of the yellow vests has made evident the aversion of many French people towards politics and its representatives. The abstention that will be registered tomorrow will be clear proof of this: the specialized institute Odoxa expects a desertion at the polls equal to 27.4%, more than 5% more than in the 2017 presidential elections. Six out of ten people declare that they do not try no interest in this election. 40% of young people between 18 and 24 will not go to vote. 12% of the French do not even know that the first round will be held tomorrow.
At the center of the stage there is The Republic on the Move by Emmanuel Macron: a movement that got off to a great start in 2017, but has not anchored itself in society and has failed to prevent disaffection and anger from coalescing against its leader. Defined as the “president of the rich” and the “maneuverer who takes care of the interests of high finance”, Macron dreamed of giving life to the United States of Europe and transforming France into a “start-up Nation”: instead he had to resign himself to perpetuate a government-led economic system piloted by the state. “All this agitation for such modest results?”, Georges Malbrunot, journalist from the Figaro and former hostage in Iraq, summarizes in an essay.
His opponent Marine Le Pen, leader of the national rally, she is instead over the moon: she enjoys a favorable wind that suddenly began to blow, the controversy over her friendship for Putin (which instead seriously damaged Eric Zemmour), believes in victory (“not for me but for the French”), says she is “ready to govern”, is convinced that this time the “republican dam” which in 2012 and 2017 precluded them will not be raised to the second round. access to the Elysée. Her image has changed: she wears midnight blue suits and ash blonde hair, gives mischievous smiles when she doesn’t want to or doesn’t know what to answer, avoids talking about a French exit from the euro, doesn’t insist on immigration, praises patriotism , tells episodes of daily life with his beloved kittens … Against the backdrop of the electoral scene we find, exhausted and dejected, two former great parties of the past.
The Socialist Partywhich was glorious in Mitterrand’s time, is entrusted to a candidate, the current mayor of the capital Anne Hidalgo, who gasps between 2 and 3 percent: she doesn’t like it, she doesn’t convince, the Parisians are angry with her for how she has upset Paris by penalizing car traffic. In turn, the neo-Gaullist right of the Républicains, which for twelve years dictated the law under the leadership of Chirac, suffers from the failure of its champion Valerie Pécressethe president of the Île-de-France region: a 54-year-old “good girl”, a “perfect little girl, a” grind with a headband and a pleated skirt “who defined herself” for two thirds Angela Merkel and a third Margaret Thatcher “… but that’s still 8.5%.
On the far left, however, the tribune of the gauche rejoices Jean-Luc Melenchon head of France Insoumise which has swallowed up communists and socialists, settling at 17.5%: a forecast that made him raise his head pushing him to thundering declarations: “In the second round I will be there, not Macron, and I will win the Elysée”. It remains to talk about Éric Zemmour, who had started a triumphal march towards 17%, but by dint of unacceptable slogans (he tried to clear Pétain through customs, he said that an employer has the right to refuse a black or an Arab, he declared that Islam is incompatible with the Republic) found himself at 9.5.