Elections in France | Macron holds a massive rally in the final stretch of the presidential campaign

by time news

“One, two and five more years.” Thousands of supporters received the French president, Emmanuel Macron, with these shouts at his entrance to the Paris La Défense pavilion. Almost a week before the first round of the French presidential campaign, the president-candidate held his first and only rally this Saturday afternoon before April 10. The great Parisian hall illuminated with mobile phones. Electronic music at full speed. Macron was welcomed like a star rock in a meeting intended to make a show of strength in the final stretch of a campaign in which he starts as the favorite, but is confronted by the obstacle of the economic repercussions of the war in ukraine.

The massive rally of the centrist leader summarized this last month of the Macronist campaign. A candidacy configured from the greatness of a clear favoritism (28-27% of voting intention in the first round), but that at the same time shows symptoms of a certain weakness. These invite us to think that the elections will be a less comfortable ride than expected by Macron just a couple of weeks ago. A survey, published on Wednesday, already warned that It would only prevail with 52.5% of the votes in a second round against the far-right Le Pen (47,5%)benefited by her false image as a defender of the common people threatened by the energy crisis.

In macronismo everything sounds great, but often also artificial. In fact, his candidacy is publicized through a documentary miniseries in Netflix and a campaign clip in the Minecraft video game universe. Two initiatives of a modern political communication, but that aroused a declining interest among the French. As if it were a blockbuster, Macron, 44 years old, has held a rally in the purest American style, in which the interventions of the centrist leader were interspersed with videos. There was also a tearful moment when he blew a kiss at his wife Brigitte Macron, 68 years old. But, also, it was a speech that was too long, more than two hours, and poorly structured.

“There is no welfare state without a productive state”

“Some They want to take us to France From the past. (…) We are here in the largest room in Europe to show that France always has something to say to the world”, she began at the beginning of his speech. “Despite the various crises, we have never given up and we have always respected our promises,” said the leader, whose one of his mainstays regarding the conservative electorate is having carried out between 2017 and 2019 a series of neoliberal measures that their predecessors Jacques Chirac or Nicolas Sarkozy did not dare to approve.

Macron mass rally. EFE


After having defended his balance, he made a long compilation of the social measures of his new program, such as increase aid to single mothers or hire 50,000 nurses and nurses. After the presentation of his program on March 17 aroused criticism for its conservative orientation —he proposed extending the minimum retirement age to 65 years (with 42 or 43 years of contributions), conditioning the attribution of an income to the fact of working or studying minimum insertion or expel refugees who are denied asylum—, Macron boasted of his center-left leg during the first hour of his speech, in which he also spoke about education and health.

“There is no magic money and to finance all this we are not going to carry out tax increases,” the centrist leader later stressed, showing his center-right leg in economic matters. He specified that France will reduce its public debt from 2026. “Sometimes it’s not nice to say it, but there is no welfare state without a strong productive state,” added Macron, who recalled his commitment to people “working harder to earn more,” a famous formula used by former conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy.

“I want general mobilization”

In fact, he insisted on his desire to overcome the partisan differences between the center-left and the center-right. “I make a call to all of them, from the Social Democracy to the Gaullist (right), passing through the environmentalists”, he stated before some 30,000 people in a massive rally, although hundreds of chairs were empty and that counted as VIP assistants the current prime minister, Jean Castex, in addition to Édouard Philippe, Manuel Valls or Jean-Pierre Raffarin, previous tenants of Matignon.

Macron mass rally. EFE


After his long speech, he reserved his most vehement rhetorical battery for last, when he warned of the risk of the extreme right. These elections “represent the fight of progress against withdrawal, the fight of patriotism and Europe against nationalists.” “You must not believe the polls or the commentators who tell you that everything will be fine (…) I want neither arrogance nor defeatism. I want the general mobilization”, he stressed.

“People tell us that these elections have already been won, we fear that there will be a demobilization effect on part of our voters,” Dominique, 53, a Parisian activist, acknowledged to El Periódico a few minutes before the start of the rally. Although he starts as a favorite, the feeling that the presidential elections will be a pure formality for Macron has evaporated.

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