Does François Hollande dream of being president again? Back this Monday evening in his electoral stronghold to support a dissident candidate for the alliance that the PS concluded with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the former president was again amused by this refrain. Until conceding to work “afterwards”.
“What we are doing here is also to prepare for the future. I believe that through this campaign, the construction or reconstruction of a political force for 2027 is being prepared, ”replied the one who believes that the PS has gone astray by joining France Insoumise for the legislative elections.
And in the aftermath, what role could someone who lived at the Élysée play? Can we exclude that he is a candidate in 2027? “I wouldn’t say any of that,” answers François Hollande at the microphone of Daily. “Everything is still open and when it’s closed, that’s what’s terrible. Let’s not close the doors. Let’s open them, ”he continues cheerfully.
Since the presidential campaign, François Hollande has been cultivating suspense over his electoral intentions. “A former president can be a candidate,” he had already declared on January 31, the day after the results of the Popular Primary at a press conference at Sciences-po.
2022 on a wire
“I even know some former presidents who wanted to be a candidate, and who did not succeed,” he then slipped. Does François Hollande talk about him? “It is on this mystery that I will take leave of you,” he concluded, in Lille. He had however, in the greatest secrecy, prepared his return in 2022.
During the presidential pre-campaign, the President surrounded himself with several of his most informed advisers, including Julien Dray, one of the actors in Mitterrand’s re-election and Christian Michel, an expert in strategy and political communication, reports Le Monde. The idea? Prepare to take the place of Hidalgo, if it withdraws.
François Hollande has multiplied the consultations on the line to adopt, the objectives of such a candidacy. Until constituting a draft program… On January 23, he declared to France 3: “For the moment, I am not a candidate”, a formulation which leaves all doors open, as he did this Monday, in Correze.
In the streets of Donzenac, the former president told Le Parisien that he had refused a candidacy for the legislative elections: “I was President of the Republic, I will not fill a void”, he declared. Before promising: “I will not leave my country without an alternative”.
This morning, François Hollande did not say a word about this prospect, the tenor of the PS preferred to play the partition of the political opponent. On BFM TV, he distributes his expertise. Then plays the anti-Mélenchon, like this spade, launched at Nupes: “For the left to be a source of hope again, it must be both audacious but it must also be believable”. Not a candidate, but not in withdrawal for all that.