The candidate of rebellious France, who had reached nearly 20% of the votes in the 2017 presidential election, narrowly failing at the gates of the second round, has the hope this time to achieve it.

"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," he said. he explained to the Parisian on Saturday.

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

Today credited with between 7.5 and 10% of the voting intentions in the polls, the rebellious leader is slightly ahead of the environmental candidate Yannick Jadot and the socialist Anne Hidalgo.

"Since we cannot unite at the top with a common program, let's do it from the bottom with a common program," suggests Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Its meeting is thus the opportunity to install the "parliament of the Popular Union", an organ of "strategic and programmatic advice" for the campaign bringing together 200 people, half of whom are not members of LFI but come from all over the world. union, associative, cultural.

"It is the starting point of a new great popular force in France", affirms the leader of the rebellious.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon during a meeting in Reims, October 17, 2021 FRANCOIS NASCIMBENI AFP

This "parliament", chaired by the former spokesperson for Attac Aurélie Found, for example includes Sylvie Glissant, the wife of the poet Édouard Glissant, champion of the "creolization" dear to the LFI candidate, the writer Annie Ernaux , Xavier Mathieu, the former CGT union delegate from the Continental AG factory in Clairoix, as well as some politicians, such as Thomas Portes, ex-spokesperson for Sandrine Rousseau during the Greens primary.

"Radical humanism"

In campaign for more than a year already, Jean-Luc Mélenchon did not choose the date of his meeting at random.

"The day after the appointment of the LR candidate", Valérie Pécresse, it was necessary "to show that it is not only the right which prepares the presidential election", explained to AFP Manuel Bompard, his campaign manager .

And the arrival of the far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour in the equation, with a meeting the same day, in Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis), "it strengthens our position: we are there, there is no that Zemmour, and it is not only the right ", summarizes Mr. Bompard.

With nearly 3,000 seats, there is no question for Jean-Luc Melenchon to compete numerically with the 19,000 registered at the Villepinte meeting.

"He does not impress us at all. We know our strength. We, our big meeting, it will be the big march of March 20 in Paris", assures Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

But, he argues, "this Sunday, two visions of the world will be face to face: one of a fairly narrow ethnicism, that of Zemmour, and mine, that of a radical humanism".

The one who has already sold nearly 30,000 copies of his Avenir en Commun program, with 690 proposals, part of which were taken from his 2017 program, says: "now is the people's time".

Jean-Luc Melenchon presents his L'Avenir en Commun program during a press conference at LFI headquarters in Paris, November 8, 2021 Christophe ARCHAMBAULT AFP / Archives

"A meeting is always a show of force", and that contributes to a campaign dynamic ", insists Manuel Bompard, who sees" a quiver of interest "from the voters and" an upward slope ".

Five years ago, Jean-Luc Mélenchon was "about the same level as now", with the voices of the Communists, who were then allies, remembers LFI deputy Eric Coquerel.

"After there was an air gap due to Hamon's candidacy, and then there was a rise. There as I do not see an air gap for the moment, we can say that we are on a dynamic which can only be rising, "he confirms.

But for the director general of the Ifop polling institute Frédéric Dabi, "the presidential election is not just a series of measures, a programmatic offer, it is an incarnation. And Mélenchon's incarnation is very damaged. He worries a lot ".

© 2021 AFP