Initially, the meeting was planned "the day after the designation of the LR candidate", who will be Valérie Pécresse or Eric Ciotti, to "show that it is not only the right which prepares the presidential election", explains to the 'AFP Manuel Bompard, the campaign director of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, currently credited with between 7.5 and 10% of the voting intentions in the polls.

And the announcement of Eric Zemmour's candidacy and his meeting on the same Sunday in Villepinte, "it strengthens our position: we're here, it's not just Zemmour, and it's not just the right", summarizes M. Bompard.

However, the response will not be based on numbers.

With a room at the Arche de la Défense that can hold around 3,000 people, the rebellious candidate cannot compete with the 19,000 registrants announced by his opponent.

"He does not impress us at all. We know our strength. We, our big meeting, will be the big march of March 20 in Paris", declared Mr. Melenchon in Le Parisien, evoking "two visions of the world ( who) will be face-to-face ".

"What we want is to show that we can bring together", explains LFI deputy Eric Coquerel.

The meeting will be an opportunity to present the "People's Union parliament", an organ of "strategic and programmatic advice" for the campaign, which brings together 200 people, half of whom are not members of LFI but come from all over the world. union, associative, cultural.

In the absence of a joint candidacy on the left with the socialist Anne Hidalgo and the ecologist Yannick Jadot, rebellious France is counting on them.

"Since we cannot unite at the top with a common program, let's do it from the bottom with a common program", explained Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Friday on BFMTV / RMC, referring to the rallying "of intellectuals , trade unionists, representatives of associations ".

This "parliament" will be chaired by the ex-spokesperson for Attac, Aurélie Found, who judges in Liberation that Jean-Luc Mélenchon "carries the program which corresponds most to (his) hopes".

Sylvie Glissant, the wife of the poet Édouard Glissant, champion of the "creolization" dear to the LFI candidate, the writer Annie Ernaux, or even Xavier Mathieu, the former CGT union representative of the Continental AG factory in Clairoix , will also participate.

Some political activists are also expected, such as Thomas Portes, former spokesperson for Sandrine Rousseau during the Green primary.

"Our ideas are extraordinarily popular, ultra majority, but we, we are not, it is this contradiction that we must resolve, by campaigning", analyzes Mr. Mélenchon.

- Quiver-

This meeting is "the crossing of an additional stage in the countryside", thinks Manuel Bompard, while Yannick Jadot and Anne Hidalgo will have similar events the following week.

"Since the release of the Avenir en commun program in bookstores (nearly 30,000 copies sold), we have seen a quiver of interest," he adds.

But for the director general of the Ifop polling institute Frédéric Dabi, although having "a very slight advance over other left-wing candidates", Jean-Luc Mélenchon has "a real difficulty: that of bringing back his electorate from 2017 ", where he reached 19% of the vote, narrowly failing at the gates of the second round.

"The presidential election is not only a series of measures, a programmatic offer, it is an incarnation. And the incarnation of Mélenchon is very damaged. It worries a lot", judge Mr. Dabi.

"I am not my caricature", defends the rebellious, in La Tribune.

The leader of LFI will also, according to Mr. Dabi, have to "seduce those who vote for the Communist candidate Fabien Roussel", while the PCF had rallied to Mélenchon in 2012 and 2017.

"The situation is volatile and the country is looking for itself. The division of the far right lowers the entry threshold in the second round. It's a mouse hole, but we have a chance to be there," said Mr. Melenchon in Le Parisien.

"It all depends on the working-class neighborhoods, if they are going to vote".

"If we have at the beginning of next year the same type of polls which put us quite far ahead of the left, we can think that we will align an effect + effective vote +", hopes Éric Coquerel.

© 2021 AFP