“No one is fooled. Listening to Alexis Corbière on CNews this Thursday morning, there is no doubt: Emmanuel Macron’s trip to kyiv aims to tip the balance in favor of LREM for the second round of legislative elections on Sunday. “I would not like the martyr of the Ukrainian people (him) to be used for operations of French internal policy”, loose the rebellious deputy who has just been re-elected, estimating that “a few days before a ballot”, this surprise visit to the Ukrainian ally at war allows the French president to “put himself back on the stage”.
Several of them, a few hours from the end of the campaign for the legislative elections, share this opinion. Except that even Marine Le Pen, usually harsh with her opponent, prefers to give the president – at the head of the presidency of the European Union for another two weeks as well – the benefit of the doubt. “It does not shock me” that Emmanuel Macron is going to kyiv, she said this Thursday morning on France Inter. “What is perhaps questionable is the fact of choosing to go there three days before the legislative elections”, she tackles however instantly.
Believing that Emmanuel Macron “could have made (this trip) ten days ago”, Marine Le Pen cannot help but perceive in this visit an “electoral ulterior motive”. “Diplomacy”, abounds Christian Jacob, is not done in front of the screens (sic) television, with a lot of advertising and communication”. The president of the Republicans denounces on Europe 1 a “caricatural staging”.
Beaune defends a “support” vector trip
Same camp, same story: the LR mayor of Meaux, Jean-François Copé, judges the visit incompatible with “an extremely serious situation” because, according to him, of a “hyper-threatening extreme left”. “The house is burning and Emmanuel Macron is looking elsewhere,” he comments on RTL, denouncing an “avoidance strategy” on the part of the President of the Republic.
In the midst of these criticisms, on television sets and in French radio studios, Emmanuel Macron can count on the good word of the lieutenants of La République en Marche to defend this diplomatic visit. This trip “is obviously a message of support, necessary, important”, defends on France Info the Minister Delegate for European Affairs Clément Beaune, himself a candidate in Paris for the legislative elections.
After the strong reactions passed, the Head of State nevertheless managed a tour de force, perhaps indeed useful for the campaign for the legislative elections: to force his political adversaries – in the forefront of which, Jean-Luc Mélenchon – to position himself on the response to the war in Ukraine.