Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not happy and makes it known. The leader of La France insoumise has had little taste the political ticket published this June 3 in the columns of the daily Release. The “talented old political leader” is accused of engaging in “conspiracy”, by the political journalist Thomas Legrand. A charge which did not fail to pique the Insoumis leader.
“Waiting for an apology from Thomas Legrand accusing me of conspiracy and even of ‘playing Trump’ for worrying about the conditions of the June 9 vote”, says Jean-Luc Mélenchon onportraying the journalist as a “petit bourgeois Parisian who comments from his office on realities on the ground that he does not know”.
The sequence opens on Saturday June 1, in Toulouse, at the meeting of La France Insoumise (LFI). After calling for the “end of the presidential monarchy” and a “system where the President of the National Assembly went to Israel to give her unconditional support to Benyamin Netanyahu”, Jean-Luc Mélenchon suggests that voters from working-class neighborhoods would have been knowingly removed from the electoral lists a few days before the European election.
“I ask you to check that you are correctly registered, because this week, testimonies came from people who were removed from the electoral lists. The entire family of a fellow MP was removed in a town,” begins the Insubordinate, punctuating his diatribe with “You’ll soon see what I’m talking about”. And to urge his supporters not to let themselves be “intimidated”, to “go to court” in the event of removal, “because we will not let go of a single vote that we lack”.
With an indignant air, Jean-Luc Mélenchon continues, thunderously: “Why don’t professions of faith arrive in working-class neighborhoods? Why are they placed on the edge of mailboxes when they are not directly put in the mail? trash while in the nice neighborhoods everything arrives in the beautiful, well-sealed envelope… Sometimes there are missing ballots inside.” And to announce, while sorting his files, the upcoming opening of a commission of inquiry into the conduct of the elections in France.
“An incomprehensible slip-up”
An indictment that could have ended there. But Jean-Luc Mélenchon also attacked the pollsters, complicit according to him, in a “manipulation”: “There will be three results between Friday and Sunday evening. On Friday, they will give us five points less than this that we will really do […]. Then there will be a second result at 8 p.m., because their damn test offices are those of the places where we finished counting at 6 p.m.”. A first result on Sunday, which would, according to the Insoumis leader, have a difference of three points with the final result given later in the evening.
Comments condemned by Olivier Faure. “An incomprehensible slip-up”, regretted the boss of the socialists, who also criticized his former partner in Nupes for “playing with the yellow line” on the question of anti-Semitism.
Words which did not fail to provoke a reaction. And to question. Tuesday June 4, our colleagues fromAtlantico publish an interview with Jean-Pierre Camby, administrator of the National Assembly. According to the former head of the finance commission division, removal is only automatic in the event of death. Thus, “if voters are removed […] these decisions are due to the municipalities concerned, the voters were informed of them and were able to contest them”, assures Jean-Pierre Camby. And to insist: “There is no reason to argue about the number of radiations.”
On the question of working-class neighborhoods which, according to the leader of the Insoumis, would be the first to be affected by these radiations, “no element allows us to say that the application of this uniform system would be differentiated in certain neighborhoods and that there would be places where radiation would be more or less frequent”, explains the doctor of law.
And this for a simple reason: “They follow population movements.” And for good reason, according to Jean-Pierre Camby, “address errors or faulty distributions of official propaganda often come from moves without those concerned having reflected this change on the electoral list – therefore a deletion should have occurred – or failures of the Post Office.
The precedent of 2021
This is not the first time Jean-Luc Mélenchon has been singled out for comments deemed conspiratorial about the electoral process. In June 2021 already, the rebellious candidate had brought more than one out of the closet – on the right, as well as on the left – by declaiming absurd prose on the airwaves of France Info. “You will see that in the last week of the presidential campaign we will have a serious incident or a murder…”. And to add: “It was Merah in 2012, it was the attack last week.” In short, summarized L’Insoumis, a “very serious event which will once again allow us to point the finger at Muslims and invent a civil war” should occur a few days before the 2022 presidential election, in which it was a candidate.