The great urban air of the Marseille city for Emmanuel Macron, rural intimacy for Marine Le Pen: the image contrast is striking on Saturday between the two presidential finalists, but their objective is the same: to call for popular unity.
During the day, around thirty demonstrations are also planned in France to say “no to the far right”, at the call of organizations and unions such as SOS Racisme, the CGT or the Syndicat de la magistrature, but without directly call to vote for the president-candidate.
Asked Saturday morning about these demonstrations, the RN candidate judged that “demonstrating against the results of an election is deeply anti-democratic”.
“I want to say to all these people: go and vote!” she said, eight days before the second round.
Emmanuel Macron offers himself a postcard from Marseille for his first big meeting between the two rounds, where Jean-Luc Mélenchon came out on top in the first round on Sunday (31%), nearly 9 points ahead of the president. outgoing.
From 3:00 p.m. in the Pharo garden, a park overlooking the Old Port, the candidate still the favorite in the polls intends to give an image of a popular gathering: several thousand people are expected in a deliberately relaxed atmosphere, without chairs but under a promised summer sun.
Among the Macronist strategists, we were particularly pleased with this format tested on Tuesday in Strasbourg – in front of a much more modest crowd – while recognizing that “it is undeniably a risk-taking, since we are never at safe from incident, including physically”.
In the second city of France where La République en Marche certainly has four out of eight deputies, but has always struggled to really establish itself, the candidate Macron will be able to count on strong support.
First, the boss of Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur Renaud Muselier, ex-LR, with whom the presidential majority had successfully allied during the regional last spring. The one who had beaten the far right led by Thierry Mariani at the regional level has become a strong ally of the outgoing president.
– “The worried system” –
But it is the presence – or not – of the mayor of Marseille Benoît Payan who will be scrutinized on Saturday afternoon and who must complete the big “gathering”. The socialist has always shown warm, even friendly, relations with Emmanuel Macron and had not supported Anne Hidalgo in the first round.
Mr. Payan called on Sunday evening to vote Emmanuel Macron to block the far right, he who is at the head of a municipal majority which goes from LFI to EELV.
The operation would also encourage Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s voters to slip in a Macron ballot on April 24 and not to choose a simple blank vote or abstention, mechanically favorable to Marine Le Pen.
Will Emmanuel Macron make new announcements at the Pharo? While working on an “enrichment” of his project, the outgoing president is particularly expected on ecology, one of the cornerstones of the Mélenchon vote which particularly appealed to young people last Sunday.
The Mélenchon electorate brings together distinct components, but especially 18-24 year olds attentive to global warming and “new cultural struggles of the left”, in particular “feminism” and “anti-racism”, notes a note published on Saturday from the Jean-Jaures Foundation.
There is no question for Marine Le Pen of leaving the media monopoly to the adversary.
After a tour in the south which is largely acquired, the RN candidate added in extremis a trip on Saturday to Saint-Rémy-sur-Avre, in Eure-et-Loir.
“We are here in peri-urbanity, rurality, which are important subjects of this presidential election,” Ms. Le Pen told journalists, just opposite the bar-tabac “le Maryland”, recalling in passing that she had won on Sunday in “20,000 municipalities in France out of 34,000”.
Between the demonstrations against the far right and the multiple platforms calling for Emmanuel Macron to vote, “this brutal agitation which we are witnessing between the two rounds” is “again not very respectful of democracy”, added Ms. Le Pen. According to her, the “system” symbolized in her eyes by Emmanuel Macron and his supporters “is worried because he sees that the people want to regain power”.
For Eric Michiels, a 67-year-old sports educator from the neighboring village of Verneuil who supports the candidate: “We are not racist (…) We want to defend our small town halls, our churches, our culture, our way of life”.
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