"With 900 euros per month" of resources and "440 euros of rent", Yvette, a 70-year-old retired seamstress, "can no longer do it" despite the weekly food parcel from the Red Cross which she obtains for 1.20 euros.

A difficult poverty to live with for this woman who prefers to conceal her name.

With 18.5% of the population living below the poverty line - 1,080 euros net monthly for a single person - Corsica is the poorest region in metropolitan France, according to a report by the National Institute of Statistics (Insee) of 2021.

Seniors are particularly affected on the island of 340,000 inhabitants: 35% of poor people live in a household whose tax referent is 62 years old or older.

Among poor pensioners, 40% are single people and seven out of ten are women.

Le Pen "to change"

Her penchant for the far-right candidate is "to change, no more, I don't know what she would do... like the others probably, because there's no more money" , she lets go.

"We are in the slush and we will stay there".

For Gabrielle Peraldi, 70, a volunteer at the Red Cross, the end of the month is also a headache.

"How do you want us to get by with 900 euros?" Asks this dynamic septuagenarian who managed a plumbing-heating company for 38 years but only receives 150 euros in retirement and 750 euros in disabled adult allowance. (AAH).

"I still had 22 workers but I never contributed for myself, I was a manager and the charges were exorbitant", explains this volunteer who "could be a beneficiary" of food aid but "does not want it", preferring to be "on the other side, helping people".

Distribution of food parcels on February 1, 2022 at the Red Cross center in Ajaccio Pascal POCHARD-CASABIANCA AFP

She expects the next president "that the minimum pension is 1,200 euros" against 916 euros currently for the solidarity allowance for the elderly (Aspa).

Today, "they give billions that go abroad and, in France, look at all the migrants who have entered, they have 1,200 euros a month, there is a feeling of injustice", she maintains, doubting that aid for asylum seekers is in reality a maximum of 440 euros per month and that many migrants are not entitled to any public aid.

"And then, let us be listened to", we must "go back to the franc because the euro has killed us".

"It worked well in the time of De Gaulle, Pompidou and Chirac", estimates the one who will vote without knowing yet for whom but "not for Macron!"

Marylise Roussel-Campagne, 69, retired and volunteer secretary of the Red Cross, also only has "a hundred euros" to end the month.

A Merkel in France

"690 euros pension, 48 euros supplementary, 400 euros survivor's pension, and to pay 582 euros and 40 cents of rent", details the one who lives with her 48-year-old son.

"Fortunately I have it because sometimes I don't know how I would eat."

Gabrielle Peraldi, 70, Red Cross volunteer, on February 1, 2022 at the Red Cross center in Ajaccio Pascal POCHARD-CASABIANCA AFP

"I have always been on the right but I will try to elect the left this time", explains this "daughter from the North, daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of an underground miner" who intends to vote , out of respect "for the guts they left there", but immediately excludes "Mr. Macron and Mrs. Taubira".

Among the candidates, Jean Lassalle, who "had been on a hunger strike to keep a factory in his city", he "likes".

The iconoclast Béarnais was at the top of the sponsorships of mayors in Corsica on February 10 with 20 out of 52.

"I was on the right until Mr. Chirac because the gentlemen who preceded him were all veterans who knew what it was like to fight a real fight for the common good", explains the one who would be "taker of a Merkel in France".

The former German Chancellor "works a bit like General De Gaulle, I like that".

As for the next president, she wishes "that he is not there to fill his pockets at the expense of the little people".

© 2022 AFP