MELENCHON. The candidate of France Insoumise hopes to create a dynamic on his project and rejects the idea of a union of the left. The polls, which give him ahead of the other candidates on the left, could push voters to vote usefully in his favor.
The essential
- Jean-Luc Mélenchon has said it over and over again: if there must be a gathering of the left, then it will be behind his program and behind him. The candidate of France Insoumise considers that a union between political apparatuses – LFI, PS, EELV, PCF – can only be artificial and believes that he is the only one to propose a “popular” and coherent project.
- This posture ignores an empirical element that is nevertheless indisputable: the more left-wing candidates there are on the starting line, the more the votes will be dispersed. If the gathering on the left is not arithmetic, it will be difficult for Jean-Luc Mélenchon to reach the second round with competition from three or four other projects on the left.
- Polls place Jean-Luc Mélenchon between 9 and 13% of voting intentions, depending on the methodologies used. But one constant has emerged for several weeks: he is in the lead among all the left-wing candidates. The leader of France Insoumise could therefore benefit from a “useful vote” effect from left-wing voters wishing to avoid a second round between Emmanuel Macron and a candidate from the right or the radical right.
- All the main news from the presidential campaign, as well as the latest polls, can be found in our article dedicated to the national election.
Latest news
9% of voting intentions for Jean-Luc Mélenchon
January 21 campaign chronicle. 10:27. The latest poll, produced by OpinionWay and published on Friday January 21, credits Jean-Luc Mélenchon with 9% of voting intentions for the first round of the 2022 presidential election. Although this would be the best score for the left, the candidate would be far to compete with the right and Emmanuel Macron to reach the second round.
The representative of France Insoumise, who wishes to repeat his good campaign of 2017 is still far from the first places: he does not yet seem able to make a place for the second round of the election to the supreme magistracy. Jean-Luc Mélenchon still intends to establish himself as the personality of the left able to carry a dynamic, and this requires the measurement of opinion on his proposals.
The polls should end up changing the situation on the left, while no declared candidate – Anne Hidalgo for the Socialist Party, Yannick Jadot for Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, Arnaud Montebourg who founded his movement and Fabien Roussel, PCF candidate – wishes to give up the race for the Elysée. In the current state of things, it is on the right that the match for a qualification for the second round in the presidential election seems to be taking place.
On Europe, Mélenchon assures that “there is no authority superior to the sovereignty of the people”
January 20 campaign chronicle. 1:08 p.m. Jean-Luc Mélenchon was also in Strasbourg yesterday when Emmanuel Macron presented his speech on European policy before the European Parliament. Only, unlike the president, the Insoumis spoke before an assembly of voters to defend his vision of the European Union. The candidate is categorical: “There is no democracy possible in the European treaties”. Consequently, the only possible answer to achieve the political ideal of the candidate is to “disobey all the provisions of the treaties which are contradictory with [son] program”. This is what he proposes with his strategy of “opt-out” or disengagement in French: to evade certain principles of European law through negotiations. A position he has defended in a very simple formulation, Tuesday January 18: “We are not attacking the EU by saying ‘throw your treaties out the window, you do what you want but so do we'”.
“There is no authority superior to the sovereignty of the people in the Republic and in democracy”, insisted Jean-Luc Mélenchon joining the positions of Marine Le Pen or Eric Zemmour on national sovereignty. The subject is delicate since the Treaty of Lisbon, ratified by France, enshrines the primacy of European law over national rights. Yet the list of counter-examples is long according to the candidate of the radical left. “We discovered that there are 2,900 cases of disobedience to European Union regulations in Europe. Well, there will be a small package more with us,” he laughed about his project.
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Invited to the 8 p.m. news from TF1 on Sunday November 8, 2020, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had announced his candidacy, then submitted to a popular nomination of at least 150,000 signatures in his favor, which he obtained quite easily. “Today, only 500 elected officials can. I support the idea that citizens can invest a candidate” he justified. He still has to obtain the sponsorship of 500 local elected officials.
The large number of left-wing candidates in the presidential race prevents Jean-Luc Mélenchon from breaking through in the polls. All the barometers all the same agree that the Insoumis is the left-wing candidate collecting the most voting intentions with scores between 9 and 11%. Find here the latest polls compiled by the Context media.
A candidate for several months, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is already campaigning. On his campaign website, you can find all the proposals made so far. This program was “co-written by thousands of citizens, it was chosen by 7 million voters in 2017 and has been updated to take into account 3 years of social mobilizations and parliamentary work” explains the site.
- The LFI candidate indicates that he wants to put “social” at the heart of his campaign. “We have emergency security laws, emergency health laws: it is time to have a social emergency law“, he insisted in an interview granted to the JDD on September 11. This social emergency law includes “the freezing of prices on basic necessities, the increase of the minimum wage to 1,400 euros net and the postponement repayment of state-guaranteed loans.
- On the pension reform, the candidate of La France Insoumise (LFI) detailed what methods he could put in place to finance the payment of a full pension (at least equivalent to the Smic) to any employee who has contributed for 40 years. The candidate proposed three solutions on BFM Business on November 4. “We only have to put the salary of women at the level of that of men and social security contributions will pay the difference”, he first explained. As an alternative, he proposes to create “one million more jobs”: “If there are one million more jobs, we finance retirement at age 60 in 40 annuities”, he underlined in particular . Third track: “A two-point surcharge on all salaries above 3,400 euros”. The LFI candidate also justified to what extent this aspect of his program was fundamental: “You know like me that working too long is harmful to health and that harming health increases distress in personal life, increases illness, increases unemployment of seniors which today costs 3 billion. In other words, what you have not paid in retirement, you pay it in unemployment, the big deal.
- On the health and vaccination pass, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has positioned himself as a fervent opponent. “We oppose the health pass because it is an attack on freedom in the world of work, in society, in human relations” he had launched at the end of August. During his interview with the JDD, the deputy returned to his rejection of the pass: “To make believe that its holders no longer present a danger to others, that’s false! But the health pass creates a society of generalized control. Generalized filing , absurd inopportune controls, etc. I said it in all tones and I voted against”.
- L’Insoumis defends the national sovereignty and, in terms of European policy, he wishes to “restore it, based on two essential clauses: social, ecological and democratic non-regression, and alignment with the best-priced standards”. He explains that he wants to “use the opt-out clause (disengagement, in French, editor’s note) when the treaties are contrary to the commitments of the program”.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon began in politics by actively campaigning within student unions and then in 1977, by joining the Socialist Party. In 1983, he became involved in local politics, elected municipal councilor of Massy then general councilor of Essonne. Senator for Essonne in 1986, he was re-elected in office until 2010. In 1989, he served as deputy mayor of the town of Massy. Vice-president of the General Council of Essonne in 1998, he was appointed Minister Delegate for Vocational Education two years later. From 2009 to 2017, Jean-Luc Mélenchon was MEP for the South-West constituency and co-president of the national office of the Left Party. Since June 2017, he has been elected to the National Assembly, deputy for the 4th district of Bouches-du-Rhône and president of the LFI group.
Figure of the left of the PS for years, Jean-Luc Mélenchon slams the door of the party in 2008, after the deleterious congress of Reims. Founder, president then co-president of the national office of the Left Party in 2000, he was elected MEP in the South-West constituency the same year. He tried for a while to rally the Communist Party around him under the name “Left Front”, which would allow him to be a presidential candidate in 2012, but he finished fourth at the end of the first round, totaling 11, 10% of the votes, behind François Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen. After his failure, he failed to be elected deputy in the legislative elections. Jean-Luc Mélenchon awaits the new European elections to finally be victorious. He was re-elected on May 25, 2014 to the European Parliament.
The gradual failure of his rapprochement with the PCF led Jean-Luc Mélenchon to launch, in 2016, the movement La France insoumise (LFI) of which he is now the main incarnation. During the 2017 presidential elections, he achieved a record score, with more than 19% of voters. With this new support, Jean-Luc Mélenchon obtained the 4th constituency of Bouches-du-Rhône in the following legislative elections. Until his third presidential candidacy in 2022, he chaired the LFI group in the National Assembly.