In Toulouse, place du Capitole and under a stormy sky, Jean-Luc Mélenchon hammered for an hour and a half that” Another world is possible “. As in 2012 and 2017, the Popular Union candidate began the last sprint of the presidential campaign with a stop in the pink city, “land of the left and of the Spanish republicans”.
In 1981 already, it was at the Stadium of Toulouse that François Mitterrand had concluded his campaign. In 2017, there were more than 50,000 on the Prairie des Filtres, on the banks of the Garonne, to come and support and hear the candidate of La France insoumise. That year, in Toulouse, Mr. Mélenchon had beaten Emmanuel Macron in the first round, with a score of 29.16% against 27.27%, far ahead of Marine Le Pen and his 9.37%.
As an introduction to the afternoon, in front of around 20,000 people, Aurélie Trouvou, the former president of Attac, called for “beat Le Pen, transform the test and disqualify the far right”. Just after Mouss and Hakim, the former members of the Toulouse group Zebda, tried to warm up the place to the sound of “Motivated! “. For his third candidacy, Mr. Mélenchon began his speech solemnly: “We are lucky, we French, to have a decisive election, even if in some respects, absurd, since it entrusts so much power to one man. But the opportunity presents itself”, he said. The occasion of “ reform this country from top to bottom in a global context of crisis”.
“The danger of a great eclipse of debate”
Initially concentrating its attacks on the President of the Republic – “Me the time I went to the Arena [en référence au meeting d’Emmanuel Macron, samedi], for the Pink Floyd concert, it was fuller and it was less hovering! – the deputy of Bouches-du-Rhône stigmatized a balance sheet of “rise in unemployment, deindustrialization, decline in purchasing power for more than 9 million poor people, elimination of 17,000 hospital beds”.
The previous week, his campaign manager, Manuel Bompard, a native of Toulouse, told the World qu’“You should not compare with previous campaigns. We realize that one in three people does not even know the date of the first roundhe regretted. The objective is to mobilize, especially in working-class neighborhoods, and of course to beat Le Pen”.
It is on these points that the candidate insisted, before unfolding his program: “ I heard the little music of resignation: there is the danger of a great eclipse of debate. I hope, whatever the opinions that people have, that for their own dignity, for the respect of themselves, they will not encourage a disastrous company of lies and smoke. »
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