Presidential: what are the risks of a non-campaign?

Nicolas Beytout 4:34 p.m., February 28, 2022

EDITORIAL

We are only 42 days away from the first round of the presidential election, and the campaign still cannot begin.

Can this situation last?

What is certain is that the campaign came to an abrupt halt, that any public speaking out by the declared candidates is henceforth indexed to the reality in Ukraine, and that, in this situation of war on our European borders, any fault of national solidarity is impossible.

Which means (and this is quite paradoxical) that the problem of knowing whether Emmanuel Macron is officially a candidate or not no longer has any importance: we are going through a period of non-debate, in a non-campaign.

And it is inevitable.

The risk, however, is that this kind of political apnea, this period of stupefaction and fear of spiraling, the risk is that we will have a non-election in 42 days.

A real deficit of democracy

That is to say an election without debate, without program, and therefore an elected without mandate.

Or, to put it another way, a comfortable election for an uncomfortable term.

For years, we have seen in France (and almost everywhere in Western democracies) that a gap is widening between elected officials and part of the population, which feels neglected by politicians.

In France, after the Yellow Vests crisis, Emmanuel Macron tested a formula of participatory democracy with the Great Debate and even more so with the Citizens' Convention.

Not very convincing.

What is certain is that if the Head of State were re-elected without the French having had any other option than to renew a warlord, without anyone really knowing for what project, for what policy for five more years,

then there would be a real deficit of democracy.

It is for this reason that Emmanuel Macron will, despite everything, need to do a minimum of campaigning, to get people to adhere to his project.

How then can his political adversaries do it?

Will they still be bound by this call for union that Emmanuel Macron launched on the first day of the war?

Much will depend on the evolution of the crisis, and the more or less rapid end of its war phase (negotiations with the Russians have already been accepted by Ukraine, they may even have already begun).

In addition, as we have seen on the occasion of bloody events, national solidarity is waning more and more quickly.

It was very striking, for example, during the wave of Islamist attacks on our soil: amazement at the beginning, rapid condemnation of the power in place at the end.

It will be the same with Ukraine;

it may be very late, it may be too brief,

but his opponents in the presidential election should have time to debate and confront their project with that of the outgoing president.

Especially since he will benefit in any case from a considerable advantage: the experience of power in times of acute crisis, the presidency.

A paradox if the French re-elected Macron

He is the only one to have been president, of course, but are all his opponents at the same level of inexperience?

No, not quite.

Among his adversaries, there are those who have no political background, there are those who have never held any office, those who have been parliamentarians (this is a first political experience), and then there is Valérie Pécresse who was minister for 5 years, and who managed the largest French region, who was re-elected, who therefore accumulated a little know-how.

The scale is not the same, but it is worth what Emmanuel Macron's curriculum vitae was when he was elected 5 years ago.

And then, it would be an incredible paradox to see that France, this country which, for almost half a century, has systematically dismissed all its leaders on the pretext that they had exercised power,