Presidential: Philippe Poutou (NPA) is not reassured for his sponsorships

Europe 1 with AFP 12:05 p.m., February 11, 2022, modified at 12:06 p.m., February 11, 2022

The far left candidate for the presidential election Philippe Poutou "is not reassured" for his sponsorships, denouncing Friday a "political problem" with an "increasingly assumed anti-democratic side".

With 146 sponsorships recorded by the Constitutional Council, "we are not behind compared to five years ago, but we are not reassured for all that because the situation, we do not control it", said complains on RMC the candidate of the NPA.

According to him, "there is a risk of having more and more elected officials who reject sponsorship".

Criticism of Bayrou's sponsorship bank

The municipal councilor of Bordeaux also criticized "the sponsorship bank" set up by François Bayrou (MoDem) who announced Thursday the creation of a site offering mayors to sponsor candidates on condition that the latter "reach 10% in polls".

"They don't have the right to do that in fact, it has nothing to do with the polls, it has nothing to do with the scores we can do, and here we are on sponsorship instructions “, he lamented.

“We also see the anti-democratic side, which is more and more accepted in the end: the election must be between the big teams, between those who are favorites in the polls and then the little ones no longer count, and that is said openly, and that I think is a political problem",

573 sponsorships in 2017

The NPA candidate had qualified for the first round of the presidential election in 2012 and 2017, collecting respectively 572 and 573 sponsorships.

Philippe Poutou obtained 1.15% of the votes cast in 2012, i.e. more than 411,000 votes, and 1.2% of the votes in 2017, i.e. nearly 400,000 votes.

Dupont-Aignan is missing 30 sponsorships

Another candidate, sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, also criticized the solution proposed by François Bayrou on Friday.

The president of Debout la France estimated on France 2 that François Bayrou had certainly "finally understood that there was a problem" but wondered "in the name of what it is the majority who will choose their opponents", judging it "extravagant".

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who assures that he is only missing 30 sponsorships (the Constitutional Council has validated 260 for the time being), estimated that "there is a real danger for our democracy" with this system of sponsorships while the "mayors are afraid of the pressures of intercommunalities, political parties".