Paris (AFP)
Fueled by excellent polls, the hypothesis of an unprecedented green wave sweeping the municipal elections in March is strengthening. But to win town halls, the Europe Ecology Greens candidates know that they
"It makes you dizzy": the executives and candidates of the party, these last weeks, are sometimes incredulous faced with a new situation for EELV.
While all the parties have seen their speeches, the last poll to turn heads concerns Bordeaux. Lawyer Pierre Hurmic went from less than 20% a few months ago to 33% of voting intentions last week, following the heir of Alain Juppé Nicolas Florian (34%).
To explain this dynamic, Pierre Hurmic evokes with AFP the peaks of heat in a city "with very mineral town planning" and the "accumulated delay" in terms of ecology by the municipality.
But the context is also favorable in many large cities, after European elections where the urban electorate had already voted for the EELV bulletin. Almost one in two voters (45%) are considering the possibility of voting for a party list in cities with more than 10,000 residents, according to a survey published on February 7.
In Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian, supported by the PCF, was given the victory in the second round with 40% of the votes in the event of PS support. The 39-year-old lawyer is unknown but benefits from the EELV label, the only one to be attractive in this period of defiance against the parties.
The candidate stresses the need not to rely on this sesame in ecology and recalls that her list is made up mostly of activists not inset. "Citizen mobilizations, in companies (...). What makes the strength of this fundamental movement is the fact that it leaves established frameworks".
Its opposition to a bypass highway and the ras-le-bol of Strasbourg particularly exposed to pollution also seem to play.
- "Baronnies" -
But more than a simple challenge, the EELV candidates intend to embody the alternative. Contrary to the "rebellious discourse of rebellious France, we are appeased Bordeaux: the transition will be made with the inhabitants, we will not pass in force", says Pierre Hurmic.
"We are talking about transition and not revolution, we will not capitalize on fears", abounds Sabrina Sebaihi, who with the support of LFI and the PS has appeared in Ivry-sur-Seine against the Communists, at the helm for decades.
Environmentalists must also fight their traditional image, which sometimes confines them "to trees and flowerpots," notes Sebaihi. She thus claims her expertise on security, a central concern for these municipal elections. It is also a declared priority of Béatrice Vessiller in Villeurbanne and of Agnès Langevine in Perpignan.
Credibility is elevated to the rank of a cardinal virtue by the environmental leader Yannick Jadot, who wants to attract the disappointed voters of Emmanuel Macron. If he shares this objective, Julien Bayou, the national secretary of EELV, has other references in mind when he talks about "municipal socialism, ecological sauce".
The specter of internal turmoil staking the history of the party has also resurfaced in Montpellier, where the head of the list Clothilde Ollier has been disowned by the national leadership.
Not enough to break the EELV wave, which leads behind it the more or less united left in Besançon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg or Toulouse, and digs its furrow alone and without wavering in Marseille, Nantes or Lille.
Paul Vannier, in charge of municipal affairs at LFI, does not hide his bitterness: "We sometimes support EELV list leaders, but the converse is much less true ..." He criticizes a party which, according to him, has mainly for objective " constitute the greatest number of local baronies and become a party of local elected representatives ".
A communist elected representative hopes for his part that the environmentalists "will not end up like the socialists" and "will have enough intelligence to consider that it is not because they are the dominant force that they must be the first" of list at all polls.
© 2020 AFP