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This Tuesday evening, in Limoges, a distracted spectator could have had trouble distinguishing the candidate in the running for the Élysée from the former president who came to dub him.
The 400 people present had come to attend a meeting of the socialist pretender Anne Hidalgo in a pavilion of the city's exhibition center.
But François Hollande, who came to support her in the home stretch of a nightmarish campaign where she topped out at 2% of the votes in the polls, almost stole the show from her, engaging in a real political show and above all setting a date for the necessary reconstruction of the party following the election.
Admittedly, the former tenant of the Élysée first did the job by saluting the perseverance of the candidate of the party he led for ten years.
“I'm here because I'm faithful and loyal, especially when it's hard.
What would people have said if I had been silent or if I had hidden?
I leave that to others, or rather to another who has never been an example for me," he said in spades to his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, who has still not called for a vote for Valérie Pécresse, despite the many calls from the foot of the candidate LR.
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And François Hollande to continue: “Anne Hidalgo has embarked on a campaign in an extremely difficult context.
She has tenacity, courage, ambition for all.
So she has my support.”
Exhausting as never Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his "lost approach" but also Emmanuel Macron, the former president then delivered a vibrant plea to social democracy "which has the most appropriate answers", at the socialism and its history.
“Being there the day after the presidential election”
Logical conclusion: the left of government must not die regardless of the score that its candidate will make on April 10.
And to revive him, Hollande would see himself playing the leading roles.
“Whatever happens on April 10 and 24, an initiative will have to be taken before the legislative elections, to rebuild the left of responsibility (…) It is up to us to be there the day after the presidential election when the country needs us.
Tomorrow is already the time to look, today is the time to prepare.
“And to take a date:” I will take my full part in it because it is the whole meaning of my life.
I got involved 40 years ago for ideas that I still share today.
I won't give anything away.
I promise you here in Limoges, we will always be there for the Republic and for France.
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VIDEO.
Palthi, 22, campaigns for Anne Hidalgo "who takes care of student problems"
What form would this reconstruction take?
For the time being, François Hollande's projects remain nebulous.
Behind the scenes of the meeting, his entourage evoked Tuesday evening "a movement which would go beyond the PS, something bigger, broader, new with other personalities".
A political force whose foundations could be launched before the legislative elections with "a labeling" for the candidates who would claim it.
What role could the former president play and in what capacity?
If his entourage "does not rule out" that he could himself be a candidate for the legislative elections in Corrèze, without his historic constituency, François Hollande would not have yet decided the question.
