Re-mobilize the popular base.
Sunday, at La Défense, under the great arch, Jean-Luc Mélenchon held a square meeting, neat, one hour, with 4,500 people according to the organizers.
A large full room and annexes or the assembly, young, seemed very motivated.
Nothing particularly striking, however, in the generalist discourse, and a tone certainly enthusiastic, but very aware of the way to go to join the camp of the two likely to appear in the second round ...
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Above all, if Éric Zemmour was quoted in his speech, like Marine Le Pen, Valérie Pécresse or Emmanuel Macron, no one at La Défense wanted to compete in numbers or in words with the Villepinte meeting.
"The battle for numbers,
says one among the Insoumis,
it will be March 20 for our great march in Paris ..."
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The objective of the day was not to make new in the message either.
Rather to present the Parliament of the People's Union, a structure of 200 people supposed to cause turmoil in the campaign on the merits, composed half of rebels and half of activists from elsewhere.
Not very far, however: communists, environmentalists, trade unionists, artists or associations, all called to represent the union from the base rather than through the apparatuses.
These parties of which the rebellious candidate has said only a few words, to mock their feigned lamentations about the lack of union.
Overheated room
With this meeting that none of his opponents on the left can match - even if it is rather close in the polls of the ecologist Yannick Jadot and the socialist Anne Hidalgo -, Jean-Luc Mélenchon achieves a show of force to left. But he knows that this is not enough to go further. So he beefed up his speech on the health pass on Sunday, a “
stupid”
measure
which
“makes you believe that you are no longer in danger”. "A couscous? Health pass… Are you getting off the train? Health pass ... "
Mocking
" orders and counter-orders based on what the egg heads have found in their office ",
he described France:
" Huge barracks controlled by a handful of lesson-givers. "
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Choosing carefully his words on the vaccine, he indicated that he was not there to
"maintain endless quarrels"
on subjects on which he does not consider himself a specialist.
What to take a little distance and spare everyone.
"Am I a specialist in virology?"
A desire to do battle
Jean-Luc Mélenchon also gave himself time, and he gave some to his troops to mobilize, with an invitation in the form of an ultimatum.
“In 2022,
he said,
everyone must take their part in the fight.
It is only the fights that we do not fight that we lose.
(…) Whatever happens, never lower your head! ”
In fact, he told them, moreover, he considers that the real campaign will begin after the holidays, giving the date of January 10.
“We will be three months before the election: it will be a sprint.
We will all have to get down to it.
We have a mouse hole to get to the second round but I'm not going to do it alone! ”
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In view of the overheated room, no one could doubt a desire to do battle. On the sidelines, however, MEP Manuel Bompard, his campaign manager, acknowledged the difficulty.
"We must not tell people stories: we can win, but it is not done, and without the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of people in the street, it cannot work." "When we are not supported by the forces of money,
he added,
we only have the numbers for us ..."
Coming from Montpellier, former municipal candidate and member of the new Parliament, Alenka Doulain is also trying, like the others on the ground, to mobilize.
"We have sixteen weeks left to go door-to-door, to convince the abstainers and the resigned, those who are not registered, that Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the only one capable of breaking the match between the Liberals and the Conservatives. "
