So Who’s Running for President?

A year from now, France will be in the thick of its presidential campaign.  The first round of the election will be held on April 8, 2022; the second round, for the two who come in ahead of the pack in the first round, will be on April 23, 2022.  The new president will hold office for the next five years.

So far, the expected candidates are incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, of La République en Marche (LREM); Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of La France Insoumise (LFI), who has already announced; and Marine Le Pen, head of the Rassemblement national (RN).

Beyond that, it becomes less clear.  The two formerly dominant parties were crushed by Macron in his first election in 2017, who drew support from both.  For the Parti Socialiste (PS), Anne Hidalgo, recently elected to a second six year term as mayor of Paris, seems to be flirting with the idea.  Arnaud Montebourg, two-time contender for the Socialist Party nomination, just came out with a book (L’engagement, 2020) that deals with his life in the Hollande administration, which is a sure sign that he wants to run.  Others have tentatively suggested that they might be available, including Ségolène Royal, who lost to Nicholas Sarkozy in 2007; and even perhaps François Hollande, who had record-low popularity ratings (consistently below 20%) as he finished his first term in 2017.  Hollande did not run again, so he is eligible to serve a second quinquennat, or five year term.  (Eligible, but not likely.) Christiane Taubira, Hollande’s Justice Minister, who was most responsible for “Mariage pour tous,” the same-sex marriage bill, also came out ahead in a poll of “left-leaning” voters, published in L’Union, with 51% stating that they felt favorably about her; but feeling favorable, of course, does not necessarily translate into a vote.

The situation with Les Républicains (LRs) is complicated.  François Fillon, the party’s candidate in 2017, was caught mid-campaign in a major scandal involving the “fictive employment” of his wife, who had collected close to 1 million euros over the course of thirty years or so as his “parliamentary assistant,” with wages paid by the taxpayer.  They were unable to prove that she had done any work to earn the salary, and in fact both Fillons were recently sentenced for fraud.  He received five years in prison, with three suspended; she received a three-year suspended sentence.  Each was fined 375,000 euros, and both were required to reimburse the National Assembly for the total of the funds that were taken.  Their attorney, Antonin Levy, announced that they were going to appeal.

In 2017, with accusations swirling around him, Fillon had refused to stand down as candidate, and he fractured the party.  

One of the most popular members of the LRs, according to polls, is the mayor of Le Havre, Édouard Philippe, who served as Macron’s prime minister until the summer of 2020.  But he alienated many LRs by working so closely with Macron, and his candidacy might well split the party again–to say nothing about the awkwardness of running against the man whose prime minister he was, and thus whose unpopular measures he is in part responsible for.  Christian Jacob, president of LRs, would not welcome him as the “providential” candidate to save the party: “He betrayed his political family.”

And the headline is rather deceptive in terms of what it actually says: 22% of those sampled thought that Philippe would do better than Macron in the job of president (with 20% for Le Pen), 63% thought he would do neither better nor worse, and 15% thought he would do worse, with 38% and 42% respectively for Le Pen.  Not enough, clearly, to overcome the resentments in the LRs from 2017.  Beyond him, there are Valérie Pécresse, currently President of the Regional Council of Île-de-France (the greater Paris region), formerly member of the National Assembly, with ministerial experience (Higher Education and Research, Budget); and Xavier Bertrand, President of the Regional Council of Hauts-de-France, former mayor, with ministerial experience (Labor, Employment and Health, Social Relations and Solidarité). His region, the northernmost part of France, which borders the English Channel, encompasses a stronghold of the RN. It will be particularly important in the National Assembly races that follow the presidential race.

The green party, EELV, has had trouble distinguishing itself as a governing, as opposed to an “issue,” party; in 2017 the winner of their primary, Yannick Jadot, joined in a union with the Socialist Party candidate, Benoît Hamon (meaning that Jadot did not run against him, in exchange for the promise of cabinet and policy positions).  Hamon won between 6-7% of the vote, failing to reach the final round.  Jadot, who headed the successful list for the European Parliament, is known to be interested; his last book, for the European elections, was published in 2019, so new-book-watch is on.

However there are dissensions within the party, notably between Jadot and Julien Bayou, the new party Secretary General. Bayou recently made news by stating that if Macron faced Le Pen in a second round, Le Pen would win. Even more concerning is a recent poll, reported in The Economist, in which people were asked who they would vote for in the second round, assuming that Macron once again faced Le Pen, as in 2017. Macron would still win, though very narrowly, by 52 to 48 %.  In 2017, he won against Le Pen by 66 to 34%.

A disturbing article in Libération, by Charlotte Belaïch and Rachid Laïreche, indicates that some on the Left will refuse to vote for Macron in the second round, even to block Marine Le Pen. In response to a request by the journal, “hundreds” of people had written in to explain themselves, and the journalists found the following themes.

One theme might be called the “I’m voting for Jill Stein because Hillary is a corporate shill” sort of excuse.  In 2002 and 2017, the French found themselves faced with a choice between a conservative and one of the Le Pens–Jacques Chirac against Jean-Marie in 2002, and Macron against Marine, in 2017.  Many of the responders stated that they would not act as a barrage again.

Another grievance had to do with just how far to the right Macron has proved to be, in his labor laws and his plan to transform retirement pensions; worse than that, he has passed a number of “liberticide” measures that some, at least, attributed to the endless Gilets jaunes demonstrations.  The recent “Global Security” law, as described by Stanislas Poyet in Le Figaro, had granted to police a number of additional powers, including the use of video surveillance and drones, the stricter policing of protests, greater powers in the prevention of acts of terrorism and the protection of public buildings.  

The most controversial aspect of the bill was Article 24, which prohibited the photographing of the face or any identifying aspect (aside from the number) of the police or gendarmerie, and spreading these images on media; the penalty was to be a year in prison and a 45,000 euro fine.  In the face of protests by the press, Jean Castex, the prime minister, withdrew this article with the promise to clarify it.  According to one of the Libération readers, “The candidate Emmanuel Macron, who seemed an innovator and progressive, bringing a non-authoritarian neoliberalism, has given way to an ultraliberal [meaning ultra free market] conservative, authoritarian president.  In the end, we don’t even need Marine Le Pen to put into place an authoritarian regime in the form of a police state in the service of the wealthy [because Macron has already done so].”

For other readers, the last straw was the very recent encounter between Gérald Darmanin and Marine Le Pen in a televised debate, combined with the “Islamo-gauchisme” campaign.  Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior who is in charge of policing and security, was a former member of the LRs who had left Fillon mid-campaign; he had been Macron’s Minister of Accounts, and then had taken the coveted post of Interior. He just published Le Séparatisme Islamiste, a likely indication of a future presidential run. On France 2, Marine Le Pen, holding his book, told him that “apart from some incoherences,” she could have written it (19s).

As described by one of the Libération readers: “When I saw Darmanin face to face with Le Pen, it was too much for me.  Not satisfied with taking measures that she would not have disowned and which makes me tremble to see her coming to power, he almost reproached her for her laxity.”  In other words, many have seen Macron as steering so far to the right that they no longer see him as much better than Le Pen.

There are others, heaven help them, who have taken the US as a model.  The election of Le Pen would be an  “electroshock” that would bring about a reality check, “like the United States.”  Some hoped that the threat of authoritarianism (which they believe characterizes Macron anyway) would force people into a union of all shades of the Left.  

(It is to be hoped that they will take a more sobering lesson from the worship of the Golden Trump at CPac.)

Almost as important as the candidates are the issues on which the campaign will be fought, and who they will favor.  As of now, the handling of Covid and the economy will inevitably cut against the incumbent.  But more serious is the matter, broadly speaking, of French identity–an issue that involves migration and Islam, brought to a fever pitch by the murder/beheading, in October 2020, of schoolteacher Samuel Paty, by a Chechen Muslim immigrant who had been radicalized by social media; following that, three people were killed in a knife attack by an illegal Tunisian migrant.  It occurred in Nice, in 2016 the site of the truck attack (by a legal Tunisian immigrant) which killed 87.

Macron responded in early December with a law of “republican principles” that just passed the National Assembly, and will soon go to the Senate.  The essential principle is secularism, dating back to the 1905 law that provided for a strict separation of church and state. The principle has also extended to a demand to keep overtly religious dress and actions out of the public sphere: a 2004 law banned the hijab in schools, a 2010 law banned the burqa in public.  Macron’s bill is aimed at sectarianism: schools and other organizations that inculcate segregation from French culture and language, mosques that receive foreign funding above a certain number of euros and others, all of which have created impenetrable enclaves of recent immigrants, especially visible in the banlieues of large cities. 

Politics isn’t pretty, but with this bill, with the “Islamo-gauchisme” argument, with the dissolving of Génération Identitaire, Macron seems clearly to be positioning himself very much as a centrist.  He is also, of course, trying to govern in tense and unusually polarized circumstances.

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“Pour Christian Jacob, ‘Édouard Philippe a trahi sa famille politique,’” Europe1, July 3, 2020.https://www.europe1.fr/politique/pour-christian-jacob-edouard-philippe-a-trahi-sa-famille-politique-3978926

Jacques Paugam, Olivier Pérou, “Bayou: ‘Macron, c’est celui qui ne sait plus pourquoi il réforme,” Le Point, February 27, 2021. https://www.lepoint.fr/politique/julien-bayou-emmanuel-macron-perdra-contre-marine-le-pen-27-02-2021-2415646_20.php

Charlotte Belaïch and Rachid Laïreche, “Témoignages Macron-Le Pen: le barrage mal barré,” February 26, 2021.https://www.liberation.fr/politique/macron-le-pen-le-barrage-mal-barre-20210226_27LAT6ZRAVA7RFZOYPDDEAIX7E/

Stanislas Poyet, “Ce que contient le projet de loi ‘Sécurité globale,” Le Figaro, November 30, 2017. https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/ce-que-contient-le-projet-de-loi-securite-globale-20201130

“France’s Emmanuel Macron must decide how to fight next year’s election, The Economist, February 13, 2021.https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/02/09/frances-emmanuel-macron-must-decide-how-to-fight-next-years-election?utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_medium=social-organic&utm_source=twitter

Sylvie Corbet and Nicolas Vaux-Montagny, “French ex-prime minister Fillon, wife found guilty of fraud,” AP, June 29, 2020 https://apnews.com/article/11947f868501d391adcf8e5e08646287

Header image by Shutterstock.com, from 2017 election.