The French electoral campaign has just "experienced an area of turbulence", judges the Washington Post, in an article published Thursday, February 24, explaining to its readers that two major candidates for the French presidential election, Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, are not not guaranteed to obtain their 500 sponsorships from elected officials allowing them to officially stand for election.
Putting her finger on a French specificity, the American daily underlines that Marine Le Pen, who announced Tuesday to interrupt her campaign to devote herself to collecting her sponsorships, is nevertheless credited with 17% of voting intentions in the polls.
He also recalls that she had risen to the second round of the 2017 presidential election, obtaining 34% of the vote.
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But the most surprising thing for the Washington Post is to see that Marine Le Pen "has found a rather surprising ally in the person of Prime Minister Jean Castex".
And the daily quotes the head of the French government calling on elected officials to sponsor candidates because it is a "democratic act" and sponsoring does not mean supporting.
The 500 sponsorships are "no longer an adequate selection criterion"
The situation of the Le Pen-Zemmour duo, but also of Christiane Taubira and Philippe Poutou, both about to be eliminated due to an insufficient number of sponsorships, also challenges the Swiss daily Le Temps, which judges the rule of 500 signatures outdated.
"The truth is that the threshold of 500 sponsorships, intended to filter applications to avoid 'wacky' personalities, is no longer an adequate criterion for selection, given the disproportion of political forces present at the level of municipalities, departments and regions", says the article dated February 22.
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"It is indeed impossible, at this stage of the campaign, to imagine that Éric Zemmour or Marine Le Pen cannot overcome the obstacle. It is also impossible to affirm that their democratic representativeness is less than that of already qualified candidates such as Emmanuel Macron, Anne Hidalgo or Valérie Pécresse", underlines the Swiss daily, which therefore pleads for a "system of 'catching up'" for "candidates without a partisan base".
"The selection of candidates through sponsorships must not serve as a pretext for undermining democracy. Nor must it become an instrument of elimination of independent competitors at the disposal of the parties. Candidates guaranteed to be on the presidential starting line should, on this point, meet very quickly to propose solutions. The healthy diversity of electoral choice is at this price", concludes Le Temps.
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