Europe 1 with AFP 4:17 p.m., March 9, 2022, modified at 4:18 p.m., March 9, 2022

François Hollande on Wednesday swept aside the idea of ​​a "useful vote" for the LFI presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, considering that he would prove to be a "not useful" president.

The former socialist president referred to the positions taken by the rebellious candidate, particularly in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Former socialist president François Hollande on Wednesday swept aside the idea of ​​a "useful vote" for presidential candidate LFI Jean-Luc Mélenchon, considering that he would prove to be a "not useful" president.

The former head of state responded on France Inter to a listener wondering about the possibility of restoring visibility to the left by voting in the first round of the presidential election for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, while the socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo collects only 1.5% of voting intentions, against 13% for the candidate LFI, now in third position behind Emmanuel Macron and the candidate RN Marine Le Pen according to an Elabe poll for BFMTV,

L'Express

and SFR published on Wednesday.

In view of the dynamics of the LFI candidate, the former socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal had estimated in February that "it is obvious that the useful vote on the left is the Mélenchon vote".

But for François Hollande, "at some point, you have to have a useful president, not just a useful vote".

He pointed out Wednesday that when he ran for president in 2012, "it wasn't to make 25 or 30 percent, to feature; it was to win."

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Holland tackles Mélenchon's positions

"However, it would not be useful to have a president who would come out of the Atlantic Alliance, it would not be useful to have a president who would put Russia and the democratic countries on both sides of the table", he estimated with reference to the positions of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the Ukrainian file.

And "it would not be useful to have a president who would gradually leave Europe, it would not be useful to have a president who at one time or another would like to completely change the institutions, without anyone knowing what else to replace them with," he added.

Anne Hidalgo had for her part responded to Ms. Royal in February by wondering about "the place of respect for institutions when we attack (...) even justice", in an allusion to the behavior of Jean-Luc Mélenchon during a search at LFI's headquarters in the fall of 2018.