There was a cute kitten during the 2017 legislative elections. Then a dog, two years later, for the municipal elections. It is now a duck, with a pig concealed in its beak, which sits proudly on hundreds of Animalist Party billboards across the country.
Never had the movement born in 2016 succeeded in investing so many legislative candidates: they are 421 in the running. “The bet has already been won, it’s three times more than in 2017”, welcomes the co-founder of the movement Hélène Thouy. The lawyer knows perfectly well that it will be very difficult to elect even one candidate to the National Assembly. Anyway, that’s not really the goal. Rather, she says she hopes to see the theme of the animal cause more carried within the political class.
More than 2% at the last European
“It’s always difficult to embark on quantified objectives for a party like ours,” she says cautiously. But it is clear that we hope to do at least as well as our score in the European elections in 2019.” At the time, the party had managed to glean more than 2% of the vote, finishing just behind the list led by the Communists.
Under these conditions, why not line up behind a personality who regularly supports the animal cause, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon? “We are transpartisan, defends Hélène Thouy. If you look at the program of Nupes, we are far from the programs carried by Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Yannick Jadot during the presidential election. Of the 650 measures, we are at 1% in favor of the animal cause. »
This election will also be an opportunity to erase the reverse of the presidential election. Hélène Thouy had failed to obtain the necessary 500 sponsorships, revealing according to her the French “institutional limits”. It remains to be seen whether the French will be able to find the bulletins associated with all these ducks which sit proudly on the party’s purple posters on Sunday.