"Take hold of this primary", launched Tuesday on LCI Yannick Jadot, one of the five candidates for the environmentalist primary.
In the home stretch, the competitors are stepping up their movements on the field and hope to boost participation, in the hope of giving "legitimacy" and "momentum" to the future winner.
All the candidates are currently traveling France: Uzès, La Seine-et-Marne, Marseille and Briançon for the mayor of Grenoble Eric Piolle;
Paris, Rennes, Chalon-en-Champagne for the deputy Génération Ecologie Delphine Batho;
Marseille, the Paris region and Bayonne for the former number 2 of EELV Sandrine Rousseau;
Lyon for the centrist Jean-Marc Governatori.
Everyone insists on the need to communicate on this open primary, launched in the torpor of summer.
A first round from September 16 to 19
If everyone from the age of 16 can vote (1st round from September 16 to 19, 2nd round from 25 to 28), for 2 euros, you must first register before September 12 on the lesecologistes website .Fr. To date, "we are about 30,000 registered", explains EELV spokesperson Eva Sas, who hopes to exceed the record of 32,000 participants in the 2012 primary (Hulot-Joly). But EELV members, around 15,000, have not yet all registered.
For Yannick Jadot, joined by AFP, "we have an interest in this primary being popular, in order to gain legitimacy and that it be a first impetus for the presidential election".
The MEP wants "everyone and particularly those who have been able to vote for environmentalists in recent years (...), those flabbergasted by the acceleration of climate change, humanists, progressives, bring this primary to life. and let it be the launching pad for the electoral campaign ”.
The former minister Delphine Batho also had half a million leaflets printed encouraging "to vote in the primary and to vote for it", explains Hubert Julien-Laferrière, close to the candidate of Generation Ecology.
"30,000 participants is very insufficient"
For him, “30,000 participants is very insufficient. It would be necessary to exceed 100,000 for this primary to mean anything ”. But "it is the end of the holidays, few people are aware", laments the deputy, who would have liked "for the primary to take place in October, so that citizens have time to understand that they can all vote" . "People have the impression that it is an internal primary at EELV", also recognizes Sandrine Rousseau, who chose to go "to sleep with people" to "take the time" to discuss with them.
For her, “the more registrants, the better. We have to get out of the primary with a civic spirit, to start putting forward this candidacy for 2022 ”. “Environmentalists are the only ones to offer this democratic moment. It is a moment of reconquest of the public debate ”, also insists the entourage of Eric Piolle. David Cormand, one of his supporters, estimates that "we will be at least 50,000 registered". "We are a little trapped by the calendar", but "we will be the only primary for those who are not on the right", which may, according to him, attract voters.
For the political scientist Daniel Boy, director of research at Cevipof of Sciences Po, “more than 30,000, I tend to think that that would favor Yannick Jadot, because he has a larger political surface, he can appeal to socialists or disappointed with Macron ”. Simon Persico, professor at Science-Po Grenoble, considers him "impossible to say whether this will benefit a moderate or radical candidate". He cites the example of the socialist primaries. “This once gave the choice of a moderate candidate, François Hollande, and once a more radical candidate, Benoit Hamon”.
But "the stronger the participation, the more legitimate the candidate will be," he assures us.
"With probably less than 100,000 participants, the legitimacy of this primary could be discussed by their opponents, when we see that Jean-Luc Mélenchon is able to mobilize more than 200,000 people in a snap."
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