Even if the campaign remains crushed by the new wave of Covid-19, with records of contamination (some 260,000 Thursday after more than 330,000 the day before).

The government has taken an important step with the adoption by the deputies of the bill on the vaccine pass.

He must pass in front of the Senate, dominated by the right, at the beginning of the week.

An allusion to Emmanuel Macron's controversial remarks on his "desire to piss off the unvaccinated" published Tuesday.

But Thursday, the word of the day is Kärcher, which sounds like a return to the Sarkozy years when the Minister of the Interior, and not yet president, had said in 2005 that he wanted to clean up the "scum" at the "Kärcher" - a brand of high pressure water cleaners- after the death of an 11-year-old child, killed by a stray bullet during a brawl between gangs in a city of La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis).

And it is in the Bouches-du-Rhône and Vaucluse, on lands where the far right achieves very good scores, that Valérie Pécresse, who was Budget Minister under Sarkozy, further toughened her security discourse: "He The Kärcher must be brought out again because it has been returned to the cellar by François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron for ten years ".

The LR presidential candidate, Valérie Pécresse, visiting Salon-de-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) on January 6, 2022 Pascal GUYOT AFP

"Track the big guys"

"Today it's time to clean up the neighborhoods, we have to hunt down the bosses, the thugs, the criminals, the dealers, it is they who must be harassed and punished, that we must deprive of their citizenship", a she said during a press point in front of the Salon-de-Provence police station.

A policeman during the visit of the LR presidential candidate, Valérie Pécresse in Salon-de-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) on January 6, 2022 Pascal GUYOT AFP

By addressing an electorate sensitive to security issues, candidate LR intends to widen the gap with the two far-right candidates Marine Le Pen (RN) and Eric Zemmour (Reconquest!).

All three are in a pocket handkerchief in the latest polls (around 14-16%) to access the second round against Emmanuel Macron, always given favorite with a stable score for months between 23 and 25% in the first round.

Marine Le Pen was also not deprived of ironicizing: "The last time that Valérie Pécresse took out the Kärcher, it was to pulverize the safety of the French by removing 12,000 police and gendarme posts".

The Communist candidate Fabien Roussel blasted an expression intended according to him to "resuscitate the nauseating ideas of Sarkozy. We know the results: a liquidated local police, international trafficking perpetuated, neighborhoods and stigmatized populations!"

"It emerges from the old expressions" which "by the way injure five million inhabitants of the neighborhoods," the Minister for the City Nadia Hai was angry with AFP.

She considers that after having "flirted" with the extreme right of Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen, "it is downright a marriage proposal" made by Valérie Pécresse, who is the most formidable opponent for the probable future candidate Emmanuel Macron.

The Head of State will address in his turn, Monday 10 in Nice, the security theme, one of the subjects which should dominate the campaign with health and purchasing power.

"Foul ideas"

On the left, the former Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira, for his part, took one more step, during a trip to Ariège, towards a candidacy, ensuring "to think very seriously".

Christiane Taubira on January 31, 2017 in Paris JOEL SAGET AFP / Archives

She will unveil her decision "by January 15 at the latest", ie less than two weeks before the Popular Primary, a citizens' initiative scheduled for January 27 to 30.

Because the left remains fragmented between five candidacies - Anne Hidalgo, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Yannick Jadot, Fabien Roussel and Arnaud Montebourg-, and the idea of ​​a primary leading to a single candidacy allowing to rise to the second round has always as much hard to impose.

To defend it, 12 activists, including MEP Pierre Larrouturou and Stéphane Hessel's daughter, told AFP to start a hunger strike from Friday.

Socialist candidate for the presidential election Anne Hidalgo on December 12, 2021 in Paris Lionel BONAVENTURE AFP / Archives

Regarding the 500 sponsorships of elected officials required to run for the presidential election, the collection officially begins on January 30, until March 4, the deadline for their submission.

Eric Zemmour, who assured Europe 1 to have some "300 promises", called, in vain, for a boost from David Lisnard, new president of the association of mayors of France.

© 2022 AFP