Presidential: Sandrine Rousseau excluded from Yannick Jadot's campaign

Europe 1 with AFP 10:32 p.m., March 3, 2022

It's a scandal that Yannick Jadot would have done well: the finalist of the environmental primary Sandrine Rousseau was excluded from her campaign team on Thursday after the publication in the press of vitriolic remarks on the strategy of a campaign without dynamics .

They had sworn to have changed, after a peaceful primary, but environmentalists are once again renewing their internal bickering.

This time, they take place a little over a month from the first round, while Yannick Jadot is nailed around 5 to 6% in the polls.

"It's a mess"

Mr. Jadot had pretended to include Ms. Rousseau in several campaign events.

But he had to speak several times to recall, after statements from his runner-up, that he was indeed the candidate.

The first act of the drama took place at the beginning of the evening with the publication by Le Parisien of an article compiling several remarks reported by Sandrine Rousseau.

She generally regrets a campaign without a "story", in which she is not involved enough for her taste.

"Our great political strategists are just useless! I'm going crazy! They screw up on everything... It's a mess", he is notably attributed to him.

Contacted by AFP, the cantor of "eco-feminism" denied outright: "These are only reported comments, from the hallway".

Twenty minutes later came a pithy press release from Mounir Satouri, Yannick Jadot's campaign manager.

This article "illustrates his choices to make a personal expression prevail over the collective", considers the strategist.

"We take note of her decision. Sandrine Rousseau therefore no longer assumes responsibilities within the environmental campaign," he adds.

"She no longer chairs the political council, she is no longer the candidate's special adviser," he told AFP, listing the key positions - on paper - that Sandrine Rousseau occupied.

Ms. Rousseau has so far not reacted to this exclusion.

This could result in the questioning of his candidacy for the legislative elections in Paris in June.

And augurs tense debates for the EELV Congress in 2022, during which Sandrine Rousseau could compete for the head of the party.

Divergent lines 

The head of EELV, Julien Bayou, declared on BFMTV: "A campaign is a collective effort, in support of Yannick Jadot's candidacy. It was what she had committed to in the framework of the primary , and with her moods or her personal strategy, she undermined all the efforts of all environmental activists".

According to him, "the easiest thing is for her to put herself (sic) out of the campaign, so that she can make her comments if she wishes".

"This decision should have been made four months ago. I had warned so many times that it would happen as it happened," tackled the ecologist deputy Matthieu Orphelin on Twitter.

He himself had been expelled from the direction of campaign spokespersons last fall, for his supposed links with Nicolas Hulot, implicated for sexual assault and harassment.

The relations between the two finalists of the primary of last September have never been harmonious because of a divergence on the political line, Yannick Jadot posing as a defender of a pragmatic ecology and Sandrine Rousseau advocating radicalism.

"Sandrine Rousseau advocates the deconstruction of man, she has just moved on to that of her candidate", quipped the former socialist deputy Luc Carvounas, support of Anne Hidalgo.

Yannick Jadot's campaign suffered this incident at the worst possible time.

Emmanuel Macron finally declared his candidacy for re-election on Thursday, a real kick-off for the campaign – which the environmentalist had repeatedly called for.

The MEP evolves around 5 to 6.5% of the voting intentions, far from the second round but also from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, first on the left, given above 10%.