French presidential election, 2022

[Cassius]

I was pretty surprised to hear that Macron started off as a supporter of Chevènement, but then I remembered that he's a French politician so I'm actually not surprised at all.

[Coldstream]

I think most people would regard Arthaud’s party as a cult, that in mind, can anyone explain why they’ve got more nominees than established party’s like Melenchon, Jadot or Le Pen?

[MaxQue]

I think most people would regard Arthaud’s party as a cult, that in mind, can anyone explain why they’ve got more nominees than established party’s like Melenchon, Jadot or Le Pen?

Cult members are efficient and dedicated?

[PSOL]

I think most people would regard Arthaud’s party as a cult, that in mind, can anyone explain why they’ve got more nominees than established party’s like Melenchon, Jadot or Le Pen?

LO most likely contracts its support base on a local level to serve these mayors somehow, either electorally or otherwise.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Don't @ me but I've decided to stop paying attention to this campaign until April because the contours of the result seem depressingly obvious already. Just going to write this down now so I can see if I was right or not:

- Pécresse will end up in single digits or close to it because she's a terrible candidate and French right-wing/reactionary voters are obviously in much more of a Zemmour mood anyway.
- Le Pen will flop because none of the relevant candidates or the media seem at all interested in talking about anything that would get a working-class and/or under-50 voter to pay attention and that's who she needs to turn out for her. Also see Pécresse.
- The left, who care
- Therefore Macron/Zemmour run-off, Macron wins by a landslide but probably on a pathetic turnout.

[buritobr]

Is it possible that the 5% who support Roussel decide to move to Mélenchon in the last hour as a useful vote? If so, the candidate of the FI can go to the runoff.

[Sir John Johns]

I think most people would regard Arthaud’s party as a cult, that in mind, can anyone explain why they’ve got more nominees than established party’s like Melenchon, Jadot or Le Pen?

As mentioned by others, LO is a very disciplined party with dedicated, faithful and reliable members (you don’t join such party in the hope to achieve a successful political career), a strong experience in the collection of signatures and seemingly an effective political training of its membership. Additionally, it has kept connections with unions, including the ones in public sector which is always helpful, and is discussing topics like the defense of public services which are popular among mayors of small communes (back in 2007, Gérard Schivardi partly owed his signatures for his diatribes against ‘forced intercommunality’).

This is contrasting with the RN which had, under the incredibly amateurish leadership of Marine Le Pen, suffered a cascade of departures among its party officials (and still ongoing) and lost a good share of its elected officials in the recent municipal and departmental elections (losing 106 regional councilors, 36 departmental councilors and 627 municipal councilors in communes over 1,000 inhabitants). And your average RN member is more undisciplined, less trained and less motivated (especially after Le Pen’s bad performance in the 2017 presidential debate which has been considered as demonstrating she will never be elected) than your average LO member. Add to than the toxicity associated to the Le Pen brand which, combined to the fact she has some chances (even hypothetical) of victory. Meanwhile, Laguiller/Arthaud are only appearing each five years to shout travailleuses, travailleurs and defend the same platform barely unchanged since the 1960s that pleased their small voter base before totally disappearing from the limelight until the next presidential election.

For the difficulties of Mélenchon, this has most to do with him no longer having the support of the PCF network of elected officials and the LFI having failed to become a locally rooted political force.

No, the real oddity is Jean Lassalle having his signatures with zero problems while not backed by a real party (the source I find on its membership is indicating for 2019 only 360 members for Résistons!, less than the Alsatian regionalist Unser Land or the Martinican Progressive Party) with a probable number of elected officials in single digits (but I’m totally unable to name a single other member of Résistons! outside of Lassalle, truly the one-man-party). His success is clearly only resting on him being a ‘folkloric’ figure strongly associated to the rural world and his ability to connect with mayors of small communes.

Is it possible that the 5% who support Roussel decide to move to Mélenchon in the last hour as a useful vote? If so, the candidate of the FI can go to the runoff.

That’s the idea sold by Mélenchon’s team which is now pushing for useful vote rebranded as ‘effective vote’ because JLM, when the leader of a junior party on the left, heavily criticized said useful vote. The problem is that even if Jadot or Roussel supporters go to vote for Mélenchon, the LFI candidate is still very uncertain to go to the runoff as, according to most recent polls, the second most-voted candidate behind Macron is polled at 16-17% when Mélenchon is polling around 10% and when the threeway battle between Pécresse, Le Pen and Zemmour remained so far undecided with all three candidates polling between 13 and 17% and neither having so far take a decisive advantage or collapsing beyond repair. If Mélenchon go to the runoff, it would necessitate both a relatively united left and a right/far right divided into three candidates neutralizing each other. Seems unlikely unless the polls are wrong or exceptional developments happen in the next weeks.

And even if Mélenchon is going to the runoff, is this worthwhile? He would be anyway defeated in a landslide by Macron while emerging as the most relevant actor to rebuild on the ruins of the left. The last part is posing problems to parts of the left (I’m including myself in the lot) as he is an aging leader (70) when Jadot (54) and Roussel (52) are younger, he is the leader of a personalist movement which may not survive Mélenchon’s retirement, he is an authoritarian figure who has alienated many of his partners on the left, including the natural ones (not only the PCF but even the Republican and Socialist Left has preferred to support Montebourg), and who had shamelessly pandered to anti-system voters of all sorts (without even much success in the polls). Additionally, he may face judicial problems for the financing of his 2017 campaign. Basically, he has never been himself a team player but is now asking others on the left to be team players.


Anyway, many seems to have bet on an easy reelection for Macron and is already preparing the 2027 presidential election with Zemmour busy undermining Le Pen’s party by poaching its members, Wauquiez rumored to be sabotaging Pécresse’s campaign to later retake control over the ruins of LR, Rousseau spending her time criticizing Jadot probably to take later the leadership of EELV, Roussel going after the rest of the left, Mélenchon trying to finish what is remaining of the PS and Édouard Philippe building his new party for his 2027 bid at a rate that is angering Macron.

[Sir John Johns]

Some traditions never die in French politics:

https://twitter.com/davidperrotin/status/1495446240112295940

Several documents and testimonies gathered by Mediapart demonstrate that the PC candidate Fabien Roussel has been paid during five years by the National Assembly while he never worked there. He actually handled the party.

Despite numerous requests, the leader of the PCF, who took the helm of the party in 2018, hasn’t been able to produce a single material element enabling to keep track of his activities of parliamentary assistant.

Basically, the same story which happened to Fillon and his wife five years ago, Roussel is suspected to have held a fictitious job of parliamentary assistant to a PCF deputy from Nord between 2009 and 2014.


I also forgot to mention, but probably nobody (rightfully) cares, that Florian Philippot has gave up and has withdrawn from the race.

[Sir John Johns]

Current numbers of nominations by candidate:

Valérie Pécresse 2,143
Emmanuel Macron 1,463
Anne Hidalgo 1,177
Fabien Roussel 582
Yannick Jadot 565
Jean Lassalle 561
Nathalie Arthaud 559
------
Jean-Luc Mélenchon 442
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan 422
Marine Le Pen 393
Éric Zemmour 350
François Asselineau 241
Philippe Poutou 224
Anasse Kazib 128
Christiane Taubira 104
Hélène Thouy 89
Georges Kuzmanovic 40
Gaspard Koenig 38

By this point, zero chances for a Taubira candidacy (this was worth all this drama about the popular primary) and for the Poutou-Kazib duo (far-left continuing the tradition of sabotaging themselves with byzantine internal feuds). Le Pen has ‘suspended’ her campaign to dedicate her time calling mayors to give her signatures while Zemmour stated two days ago it will be ‘very possible’ he doesn’t get the nominations. In contrast with Dupont-Aignan who, despite his moribund party, a campaign team weakened by defections and a low media exposure, is so far better placed to access to the ballot.

Fortunately, François Bayrou, who is currently at the same time the president of Modem, the mayor of Pau and the high commissioner for planning (kudos for the economically liberal Macron to have create that sinecure, mostly out of nostalgia for the Trente Glorieuses and its iconic General Planning Commission, and to have gave it to a political dinosaur who has some problems with the justice for a case fictive jobs and has never been especially involved in economic questions nor has any kind of expertise in this area) and is apparently still lacking of work, has organized a ‘democratic bank of nominations’ to which mayors could sent their signatures to be attributed to a struggling candidate standing over 10% in polls (i.e. Le Pen, Zemmour and Mélenchon). So in short, the ‘system’ is now rescuing ‘anti-system’ candidates because they are too much amateurish to collect the nominations/have pissed up everybody/are coming late to the party.


* According to recent polls, Pécresse’s support is eroding with the latest Elabe placing her fourth with 11.5% (just ahead of Mélenchon at 11%) with Macron at 24.5%, Le Pen at 18% and Zemmour at 13.5%. In addition to catastrophic and widely mocked public appearances, she is now additionally facing allegations of conflicts of interest over the awarding of public contracts as president of Île-de-France to Alstom, a big company she and her husband have stock options in.

* As expected, Nicolas Bay has defected to Zemmour and immediately been promoted as vice president of Reconquest while attacking his former party in the media, describing the functioning of the RN as ‘closer to the functioning of a sect than to the functioning of a mature political party’ and denouncing what he called ‘some sort of sectarian aberrations’ in Le Pen’s party. He also pretended he will sue the RN for libel over accusations of him being a mole of Zemmour in the party.

This is the latest of a series of media charge against the RN by former members of that party who have jumped aboard the Zemmour ship, the worst having been Gilbert Collard insulting one month ago Julien Odoul (a RN leading member previously recorded making dubious jokes on the suicides of farmers) in Jean-Marc Morandini TV-show and stating this was ‘because of imbeciles like you’ that he left the party. All of this isn’t giving a flattering image of neither the RN nor Zemmour’s party (and of politicians as a whole) and all these people burning bridges with the RN are making more difficult any future attempts to bring together the two far-right parties in the aftermath of the first round and for the legislative elections. I guess Zemmour’s bet was that Le Pen candidacy (and her party in the process) would have floundered facilitating his project of ‘union of the rights’ with a weakened LR but this is not happening: Le Pen remains so far the best-placed candidate to go to the runoff, remaining stable at around 16%-17% since weeks if not months in spite of a quite unremarkable campaign, problems of financing and widely publicized defections.

* Also, Le Pen came up with a formidable promise:

https://twitter.com/MLP_officiel/status/1493881411438321665

When elected president, I will prohibit the use of foreign languages in advertising.

The two obsessions of French politicians: food and language (in which other country, the title of ministries is changing at such rate, pretty much at every reshuffle?)

* Zemmour has lost one of his most famous supporter, Brigitte Bardot, after he made a discourse in front of the Movement of Rurality (LMR, formerly Hunting, Fishing, Nature and Traditions) in which he proclaimed that he would refuse anybody forbidding hunting, described hunters as ‘the real ecologists’ and signed the ‘30 proposals of LMR to revitalize our rural territories’. The text is notably including the defense of hunting, fishing, bullfighting and cockfights and the ‘preservation and promotion of all French cultural, culinary and sportive traditions (foie gras, Christmas tree, Tour de France, traveling circuses with animals, …)’ (not a joke, these are the examples they come up with to illustrate French traditions). This as been too much for the former actress and advocate of animal well-being who had published on Twitter a letter in which she indicated ‘being devastated and profoundly shocked by the excruciating words [Zemmour] has expressed about animals’ and stated that ‘a dry heart indifferent to suffering, be it human or animal, can’t save France nor being its president’ (note that Bardot’s empathy doesn’t extended to migrants, Muslims and Black people against which she has previously made extremely offensive comments, calling for example inhabitants of Reunion Island ‘degenerates’ – I guess her type of ecology is of the Hitler-like sort).

Hunting has by the way came back in the public debate these last days, after a 25-year-old hiker had been accidentally killed by a hunter aged of only 17.

* Macron is expected to declare in the next days but the situation in Ukraine is making things more complicated. A meeting of the president running for reelection is planned for March 5 in Marseille.

[Sir John Johns]

Sometimes, I think I should be a bit more serious and less ironic when writing about this election.






And then you have that:






https://twitter.com/libe/status/1496455680533925888

Dead, fictive or proxy members and even a dog: Libération reveals the fraudulent maneuvers that tarnished the LR primary.

The phoney election of Valérie Pécresse: discover the inquiry of Libération

Libération is publishing an article (behind a paywall) on alleged irregularities in the LR internal primary, concerning especially the membership files as the number of members of the post-Gaullist party has increased from 80,000 to almost 150,000 between September and November 2021. According to Libé, were registered as legit members at least three people deceased at the time of their registration, Chinese citizens who can't even speak French (apparently also Sri Lanka citizens) registered on behalf of Pécresse’s team, and so a dog, Clovis, whose owner, a supporter of Ciotti, registered on the name of ‘Douglas’. Said dog used to have an Instagram account which has been deleted shortly after the article came up.

According to Libération, several hundreds of members are suspicious but it is impossible to determine which ones actually voted in the internal primary as the vote records have been destroyed. Ciotti received then 665 votes more than Pécresse who herself received 1,209 votes more than Barnier and 2,966 more than Bertrand.

This is an article written by a group of seven journalists in a serious (even if left-leaning) newspaper so, the fraud allegations aren't probably unfounded even if the extent is unknown. The again, this is a party addicted to such practices (between Jean Tiberi who made dead people voting for him when running for mayor of Paris to the Copé-Fillon psychodrama in November 2012).

LR has denied any problems with the primary and is considering suing Libération.

And, when asked by journalists, the surprised LR legislator in charge of certifying the primary election explained that ‘the dog couldn’t voted because the dog is unable to read the code number sent by SMS on his mobile phone’.

https://twitter.com/paul_denton/status/1496535635364130826

[DL]

I wonder if the Russian invasion of Ukraine could be a factor in France. It could lead to more scrutiny of how LePen, Zemmour and Melenchon support Putin and presumably will cheer on the invasion. There will also be more stories about how Putin funds various far right and far left political parties in France

[windjammer]

I wonder if the Russian invasion of Ukraine could be a factor in France. It could lead to more scrutiny of how LePen, Zemmour and Melenchon support Putin and presumably will cheer on the invasion. There will also be more stories about how Putin funds various far right and far left political parties in France

I mean, crisis like that usually benefit the president

[Zanas]

I wonder if the Russian invasion of Ukraine could be a factor in France. It could lead to more scrutiny of how LePen, Zemmour and Melenchon support Putin and presumably will cheer on the invasion. There will also be more stories about how Putin funds various far right and far left political parties in France

I'm not a Mélenchon fan but even he condemned the invasion in Ukraine. And which parties of the far left8 are funded by Putin exactly, where did you get this idea ?

[Mike88]

I wonder if the Russian invasion of Ukraine could be a factor in France. It could lead to more scrutiny of how LePen, Zemmour and Melenchon support Putin and presumably will cheer on the invasion. There will also be more stories about how Putin funds various far right and far left political parties in France

I mean, crisis like that usually benefit the president

Before that, I think it should be asked if Zemmour will even be a candidate, as he's having a lot of trouble collecting support from mayors. Also, the view here in my country is that Macron came out badly from all of this Russia-Ukraine escalation, and that he made a fool of himself. What's the view of his role in France?

[Zinneke]

I wonder if the Russian invasion of Ukraine could be a factor in France. It could lead to more scrutiny of how LePen, Zemmour and Melenchon support Putin and presumably will cheer on the invasion. There will also be more stories about how Putin funds various far right and far left political parties in France

I'm not a Mélenchon fan but even he condemned the invasion in Ukraine. And which parties of the far left8 are funded by Putin exactly, where did you get this idea ?

He only condemned it in a watered down manner.

[DL]

I wonder if the Russian invasion of Ukraine could be a factor in France. It could lead to more scrutiny of how LePen, Zemmour and Melenchon support Putin and presumably will cheer on the invasion. There will also be more stories about how Putin funds various far right and far left political parties in France

I'm not a Mélenchon fan but even he condemned the invasion in Ukraine. And which parties of the far left8 are funded by Putin exactly, where did you get this idea ?

We know for a fact that Putin funds LePen's Ralliement Nationale - and its common knowledge that the Russians will funnel money to any politicians or parties in the west that oppose liberal democracy and parrot Putin's talking points - so its hard to belive that he wouldn't be sending money to Melanchon and co

[PSOL]

I wonder if the Russian invasion of Ukraine could be a factor in France. It could lead to more scrutiny of how LePen, Zemmour and Melenchon support Putin and presumably will cheer on the invasion. There will also be more stories about how Putin funds various far right and far left political parties in France

I'm not a Mélenchon fan but even he condemned the invasion in Ukraine. And which parties of the far left8 are funded by Putin exactly, where did you get this idea ?

We know for a fact that Putin funds LePen's Ralliement Nationale - and its common knowledge that the Russians will funnel money to any politicians or parties in the west that oppose liberal democracy and parrot Putin's talking points - so its hard to belive that he wouldn't be sending money to Melanchon and co

I have my doubts such a conservative government is sending money to Melenchon’s party, a person whose contacts in Russia entirely consist of the social democrats in the Left Bloc who are incredibly opposed to the war in Ukraine and have several mid-level party leaders in jail. Melenchon’s party, made up of social democrats who were previously aligned with parties that backed Trotsky, who established a tradition of #bothsides critiques of the USSR and NATO, would leave en masse if this was discovered by the upper echelons given LFI’s highly democratic and fractured structure.

[DL]

I have my doubts such a conservative government is sending money to Melenchon’s party, a person whose contacts in Russia entirely consist of the social democrats in the Left Bloc who are incredibly opposed to the war in Ukraine and have several mid-level party leaders in jail. Melenchon’s party, made up of social democrats who were previously aligned with parties that backed Trotsky, who established a tradition of #bothsides critiques of the USSR and NATO, would leave en masse if this was discovered by the upper echelons given LFI’s highly democratic and fractured structure.

YOu seem to have this crazy idea that Putin gives a damn about the domestic ideologies of the parties he covertly backs in the west. He would not care if LFI wants to increase spending on health care or bring in some environmental policies - all he cares about is creating as much disruption as possible and the only litmus test is if a party and its leader is willing to be an apologist for his Russian imperialist aggressions. I'm sure Putin views his leftwing apologists like Jeremy Corbyn or Glenn Greenwald as "useful idiots" 

[Sir John Johns]

I wonder if the Russian invasion of Ukraine could be a factor in France. It could lead to more scrutiny of how LePen, Zemmour and Melenchon support Putin and presumably will cheer on the invasion. There will also be more stories about how Putin funds various far right and far left political parties in France

I'm not a Mélenchon fan but even he condemned the invasion in Ukraine. And which parties of the far left8 are funded by Putin exactly, where did you get this idea ?

We know for a fact that Putin funds LePen's Ralliement Nationale - and its common knowledge that the Russians will funnel money to any politicians or parties in the west that oppose liberal democracy and parrot Putin's talking points - so its hard to belive that he wouldn't be sending money to Melanchon and co

The RN is owing debt to Aviazapchast, a Russian company specialized in the delivery of aeronautics spare parts considered as closed to Russia’s secret services, and has recently received a loan from a Hungarian bank. Thanks to Marine Le Pen’s sound management, the party which has never received so much public financing due to its strong electoral results since a decade, is heavily indebted and almost bankrupted. Among RN politicians largely aligned on Moscow are notably Thierry Mariani (ex-UMP) and Andrea Kotarac (ex-LFI who precisely left Mélenchon’s party after his participation to a pro-Russian conference in Crimea).

Other parties or active politicians clearly tied to the Kremlin aren’t far-left but part of the ‘sovereignist’ political sphere, supposedly left-wing, the most obvious case being Georges Kuzmanovic whose phone booth has benefited from astroturfing on behalf of RT (the few number of nominations he has collected is proving how unimportant this party is, still there are some on this blog who are aware of the guy and even of the general secretary of his party I had previously never heard of). You can add to that list, the economist Jacques Sapir and Olivier Berruyer, the editor of Les Crises website, who are parroting Russian propaganda while blaming everything wrong in the world on the US State Department/the CIA/the NATO. Now, the political class is waking up and the Senate has been called for the suspension of the broadcasting of RT; its main anchorman (unsurprisingly another conspiracy theorist/lunatic right-winger/clown mainstreamed thanks to the French public television like Zemmour, Thierry Meyssan, Cyril Hanouna, Yann Moix, …). Nevertheless, these ones aren’t particularly influential and are electorally insignificant. The main goal of Russia has been to undermine French (and more widely Western) governments by giving wide publicity to any sort of social protest (notably the Yellow Jackets and the anti-vaxx) not to elaborate an organized and ideologically coherent opposition to Macron. Mélenchon is only parroting Kremlin’s talk points because he is anti-American and an authoritarian creep (see below): he is doing it for free.

Also, and this could became an embarrassment (yet another one) for Pécresse’s campaign but former prime minister François Fillon is a member of the board of directors of two Russian companies, Zarubezhneft (oil extraction) and Sibur (petrochemicals). Macron’s team has already going to attack Pécresse on this.

I mean, crisis like that usually benefit the president

Before that, I think it should be asked if Zemmour will even be a candidate, as he's having a lot of trouble collecting support from mayors. Also, the view here in my country is that Macron came out badly from all of this Russia-Ukraine escalation, and that he made a fool of himself. What's the view of his role in France?

While Macron’s failed attempt to a last-chance negotiation with Russia has initially been mocked (especially a photography of Macron and Putin at a very table with the French president seating at a one end and, some several meters from it, the Russian president at the other end which has rejoiced far-right on Twitter who celebrated ‘the humiliation’ of Macron), I’m not sure his major opponents will be able to exploit this episode because they ALL also supported ‘dialogue’ with Putin and even having a more conciliatory attitude toward the Russian president going as far as blaming the NATO for being the only responsible of the increasing tensions.

A lot a comments made by various presidential candidates in the last weeks will come back haunting them; you can be sure Macronists will exploit them. Notably, Zemmour publicly said in December that he seriously doubt Putin will invade Ukraine, explained on the beginning of this month that ‘in history, Russians haven’t often attacked [their neighbors]’ and that if they invaded Eastern Europe in the 1940s that was because they have been attacked by Germany and declared in September 2018 he dreamed ‘of a French Putin’. Le Pen, when in a conference gathering European far-right parties last month in Madrid, refused to sign a common declaration condemning military actions of Russia on the border with Ukraine. Also last month, Mélenchon said that ‘Russia is a partner’, that ‘this is the United States which are in an aggressive position not Russia’, that Russian ‘threat doesn’t exist according the Ukrainians themselves’. On 6 February, he was still saying that Putin’s position was ‘understandable’. Just four days ago, he supported the idea that France should be ‘non-aligned’ in the imminent war. Now, Hidalgo and Jadot are attacking him on his previous phony anti-imperialist stances.




By this point, I think Macron will be easily reelected (but things are unpredictably now) as the opposition is unable to provide a half-coherent alternative and as he will benefit from a rally round the flag effect. The main problem which could arise and hamper a victory of Macron could be the issue of purchasing power and fuel prices that will probably became even more salient; the Macron government has temporarily (and partly) solved the problem by literally distributing checks (energy checks, inflation compensation) but this is a short-term solution that is deteriorating public finances and for which we will pay after the election.

I have my doubts such a conservative government is sending money to Melenchon’s party, a person whose contacts in Russia entirely consist of the social democrats in the Left Bloc who are incredibly opposed to the war in Ukraine and have several mid-level party leaders in jail. Melenchon’s party, made up of social democrats who were previously aligned with parties that backed Trotsky, who established a tradition of #bothsides critiques of the USSR and NATO, would leave en masse if this was discovered by the upper echelons given LFI’s highly democratic and fractured structure.

In which world, LFI has a ‘highly democratic and fractured structure’? This is one of the most personalist and undemocratic party in French politics with Mélenchon deciding about absolutely everything (one of the most recent example has been Clémentine Autain being forced to abstain on a resolution condemning the genocide of Uighurs). Haven’t you noticed that there has been no internal primary or consultation organized to nominate Mélenchon as the party’s candidate? Unlike the PS, the Greens and, yes, even the PCF?

Mélenchon’s whole foreign policy is largely directed by an insane and rabid anti-Americanism and a complete romanticization if not fascination for foreign authoritarian and dictatorial governments (Venezuela, China, Syria, Cuba, Correa’s Ecuador, and, in this case, Russia) he is totally uninformed on and is seeing solely through Franco-centric/dumb anti-US lens. He is not the only one in French politics, before him there was already Chevènement who presented Saddam Hussein as a paragon of laïcité (yeah, putting the tabkir on the national flag is totally laïcité).


Speaking of what, it has been reported yesterday by Le Monde that Chevènement would endorse Macron on Sunday. This is how much of a fraud this guy is, certainly one of the most overrated politician in France: in the 1980s, he resigned over the pro-market turn of Mitterrand, posed as the defender of the National Education and the herald of ‘sovereignism’ and now he is supporting the neoliberal and pro-UE Macron who has been pretty transparent on his intents to largely dismantle public schools in his next term in office.

[JimJamUK]

What’s Roussel’s policy on Russia?

[DL]

What’s Roussel’s policy on Russia?

All I know about Roussel is that he in favour of people eating steak!

[Sir John Johns]

He has condemned the invasion of Ukraine and previously called the recognition of the separatist republics as ‘extremely grave and dangerous’ while also urging for the opening of (very unlikely) peace negotiations. Like Mélenchon, he was among those who have blamed the escalation on the NATO (one of his promises is the withdrawal of France from the integrated command of that organization) even if less vocally than Jean-Luc. Then, Roussel doesn’t appeared to me as particularly interested nor invested on the question of foreign affairs (unlike Mélenchon who extensively write on that topic on his blog and has tried to build an ‘international stature’ by meeting political leaders in Latin America and Africa).

According to the website of the PCF, the party is demanding France to remain outside of the war and to not deliver weapons to belligerents while blaming both sides on the ongoing situation. It is requesting the French government to support a peace proposal. Meanwhile, Mélenchon is wanting to circumvent the NATO by devolving the task of reaching peace to the OSCE.

By contrast, Jadot and Hidalgo are advocating strong sanctions against Russia and are blaming the sole Putin for the outbreak of the war. The Greens have always been critical of Putin government while the PS has almost always defended Atlanticist stances. Jadot, Hidalgo and Taubira participated to a protest in support of Ukrainians in front of the Russian embassy; neither Roussel nor Mélenchon (but he is currently campaigning in La Réunion) have attended.

[Coldstream]

Not related to the election, but since there’s no France mega thread - Fillon has resigned from his Russian corporate board positions for fear of being caught up in sanctions.

He only worked there for 3 months, so he probably made less money than his wife did as his fake assistant.

[Helsinkian]

Politico.eu article on how various until now openly pro-Putin politicians are trying to walk their words back, including Le Pen, Zemmour, Mélenchon: https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-european-pals-eat-their-words-marine-le-pen-eric-zemmour-matteo-salvini-milos-zeman-alex-salmond-gerhard-schroder-boris-johnson-jean-luc-melenchon-francois-fillon-viktor-orban/

[Coldstream]

Looking at the sponsorships, doesn’t look like Asselineau or Poutou are that close despite getting enough in 2017.