Following the call for help from Yannick Jadot and Valérie Pécresse, they made a transfer of 10.40, 100 euros. A way according to them to save the victims of the political recomposition.
Marie-Charlotte is angry. “This little Bordeaux retiree“As she describes herself, inserted in Les Républicains and faithful among the faithful, was crestfallen on the evening of the first round. The ballot gave its candidate, Valérie Pécresse sadly losing with 4.78% of the vote. Half less than announced the last polls before the first round. With the environmental candidate Yannick Jadot, Valérie Pécresse cannot therefore claim reimbursement of 7 million euros of her campaign costs, reserved for candidates who win more than 5% of the vote.
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The day after the election, Valérie Pécresse spoke. “Republicans cannot afford these expenses. I am personally in debt to the tune of 5 million euros. This is why I am launching a national appeal for donations this morning.“. The sequence was immediately hijacked on social networks, against a background of innuendo on the important heritage of the president of the Île-de-France region. Philippe Poutou offered the candidate his Peugeot 308 and Jérôme Kerviel compared it to his own situation.
Marie-Charlotte, she made a transfer of 40 euros to the candidate. The retiree who usually only givesto the homeless and to works“Was touched by this candidate victim of the”wickedness of people“, while she is “honest». «The only saucepans of Valérie Pécresse, they are in the kitchen“, she lets go.
As indicated Le Figaro at the beginning of the week, Valérie Pécresse collected, in one week, 1.4 million euros out of the 7 million planned. EELV, for its part, obtained more than 1.2 million euros according to the figures transmitted by the party at the end of last week. Behind these donations, anonymous people personally affected by the financial distress of the candidates, or frightened by the political recomposition in progress.
Feeling of guilt
Boumediene, 42 and Algerian, does not vote in France. He still decided to pay 10 euros to Valérie Pécresse, just after seeing her on TV. “It was said that she was not campaigning properly and that she was not a good speaker. When I saw her speak at that time, I thought she was really herself», Explains this trader.
Eric, 51, was also affected by the fall of the candidate, in personal debt, and let go by Nicolas Sarkozy, who did not give him his support. He who had already paid 500 euros to the Horizons party of Édouard Philippe made a transfer of 200 euros to Valérie Pécresse. It is his way, with the vote, of sponsoring his political ideas, in a political landscape that is so dynamic and which “scares». «Always beware of politicians“, warns this boss of several optical shops, “but since I don’t have time for a party, I prefer to give them money».
It is the same feeling of guilt that led Pierre, a 26-year-old entrepreneur, to pay 50 euros to Yannick Jadot’s campaign, “even though at that time I only had 150 euros in my current account“, he recalls. For personal reasons, he was unable to vote on April 10. “If I and others had gone to vote, Yannick Jadot might have been able to exceed 5%. I said to myself, ‘poor guy, he didn’t go far’“explains the young man. This is his first donation to a party. “Frankly, I feared the disappearance of the Greens and LR».
Failure identification
Several donors who responded to Le Figaro have themselves had political experience at the local level. The call for help from the presidential candidates has awakened in them memories of difficulties and failures, and questions about the future political model.
Anne Pellet regrets that the two donation platforms set up by the unsuccessful candidates did not allow candidates to leave personalized words, “so that they know who are the people who give them“. She was elected independent centrist at Croix-Rousse (Lyon) and knows what it means to put her hand in her pocket to finance certain campaigns that she has been able to lead. “In 2012, I had hesitated to apply for the legislative elections to bring my ideas to life, but as I knew that I risked not exceeding 5%, I gave up for lack of means.“, she explains.
From now on, Anne Pellet wonders. Should we bet our own savings for an election? The elected (unpaid for her mandate) fears that, if Yannick Jadot and Valérie Pécresse did not manage to complete their budget, this failure would create a precedent and that certain presidential candidates would no longer dare to launch, or lead ambitious campaigns, for fear of non-reimbursement.
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«It wouldn’t be good for the future“, also estimates Zeineb, 26, who gave 10 euros for LR and 5 euros for EELV. This employee of the international cooperation sector is however rather macronist. The collapse of the partiestraditional», «LREM has something to do with it“, she admits. “But we are not obliged to find ourselves in a bipolarity with the extreme right. For example, we need environmentalists in the political landscape to come.».