The ecological presidential candidate Yannick Jadot holds Saturday in the Aisne the first major event of a campaign which is struggling to take off and silence calls for union, including that of Anne Hidalgo in favor of a primary in left. In a gymnasium in Laon, a few kilometers from his native village, he will hold a “Forum of possibilities” in the afternoon, with testimonies from citizens preceding his speech.
"It is not a meeting but a meeting which aims to give importance to the citizen's voice, after the
" yellow vests "
and the citizens' convention for the climate"
, explains spokesperson coordinator Delphine Batho to AFP.
A few hundred people are expected, unlike the great masses of Eric Zemmour and Jean-Luc Mélenchon last weekend.
To discover
Presidential 2022: where are the candidates in the polls?
Read also Anne Hidalgo's crazy bet to save her campaign
Yannick Jadot praised, Wednesday in front of the press, this
“reduced model”,
far from the meetings,
“big machines to speak to his voters first”
. A justification that a close friend of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, but also an EELV executive, mock in private, rather pointing to the inability to mobilize more activists - Achilles heel of the Greens for a long time. The polls credit Yannick Jadot with between 6 and 9% of the voting intentions, a starving score in view of his ambition to qualify in the second round and then to win.
"The match has not started"
and will be held from January, wants to reassure the ex-number 1 of EELV David Cormand.
"We do not play the campaign on the meeting on Saturday, it is a first initiative that is part of the long term"
, abounds Delphine Batho.
Yannick does good media interventions but that is not enough, we must also be able to mobilize activists.
"
Alain Coulombel, representative of the left wing in the executive office of EELV
But Yannick Jadot's team had counted on a take-off in the polls this fall, which never happened, tells a regular interlocutor on condition of anonymity:
“They told me that they thought they were at 11% in October, and 13% at Christmas ... They are at 6 or 7. Honestly, his campaign is disappointing. "
Yannick Jadot in particular suffered from the disembarkation of his spokesperson coordinator, Matthieu Orphelin, splashed by the Hulot affair, and who in return called into question the
"difficulties"
of the campaign.
"We added to the psychodrama by tearing off the bandage in a bad way, people said to themselves that we had things to be ashamed of"
, regrets MEP David Cormand. He does not want to be worried but notes:
“Zemmour, Hulot affair, dynamic Pécresse, it is difficult to be heard.
There is a lot of confusion, it's complicated for an emerging force like ours to structure our electorate.
You have to be a prescriber, continue to talk about the substance.
See also Presidential: Yannick Jadot relies on rallies to bring together beyond environmentalists
Another obstacle has stood in the corridor of long-distance runner Yannick Jadot: the proposal of a primary on the left, Wednesday by his socialist competitor Anne Hidalgo. The ecologist was quick to refuse the offer, weighing his words:
"No, I will not participate in a primary of the left"
. This time it's his turn, after a withdrawal in 2017 in favor of Benoît Hamon, he argued in substance, defending an ecological “project” capable of bringing together left-wing voters, in the absence of parties. An answer that infuriated Alain Coulombel, representative of the left wing in the executive office of EELV:
“It is a political error to have answered so curtly.
We are going to lose a little more the climate generation, the young people, the unions, the actors of the social and solidarity economy who expect us to come together ”
.
For the one who is also spokesperson for EELV, the campaign is
"sluggish"
:
"Yannick makes good media interventions but that is not enough, we must also be able to mobilize the activists."
The organizers of the Popular Primary will continue to put pressure on Yannick Jadot.
The blunt argument they hold him, reports one of them:
"Yannick if you bow to the primary, you win it"
.
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