“Throughout this campaign, my interviewers have asked me what I was doing in this election, given that the polls give me less than 1%, but also because I assume that I am not seeking to be President of the Republic. “, launched, bravado, the candidate in front of some 3,500 people according to the organizers.

“I say it again a week before the election: the ballot has never changed the lives of workers, even less today, when the economic crisis and the spreading war pose new threats everywhere. on the planet", continued the contender for the Elysée Palace for the third time.

"So why vote for me? Because we must affirm the need to fight and overthrow capitalism", hammered Nathalie Arthaud, on a red background marked with her slogan, "the workers' camp".

Nathalie Arthaud during a meeting at the Zénith in Paris on April 3, 2022 Sameer Al-DOUMY AFP

By video, the former figure of LO Arlette Laguiller, six times presidential candidate, also urged the activists "not to curb (their) revolt and not to give up (their) ideals".

At the end of this last weekend filled with meetings before the first round, the spokesperson for LO and worker Jean-Pierre Mercier also judged on the stage that "the great electoral masses are only a derisory epiphenomenon in the march of this world that is running towards chaos".

He underlined that "the fight against the capitalists" is carried out on a daily basis, beyond the election.

"In reality our future does not depend" on political leaders "but on the evolution of the military and economic balance of power", added Nathalie Arthaud, for whom "we are falling into a period of instability" where "more than ever" , it will be "their profits or our living conditions".

Against a "vote of resignation"

She denounced "the great reverse" promised by Emmanuel Macron, who wants during a second term to push back the retirement age to 65 or condition the RSA to hours of activity.

The Trotskyist candidate, professor of economics, defended her flagship measure of a minimum wage of 2,000 euros net per month for all workers, including "disabled people", especially at this time when the war in Ukraine "has already heavy repercussions on the price of energy, gas, oil, wheat".

While "the threat is getting closer" because "capitalism and war are inseparable", she recalled her faith in "internationalism", opposing the rearmament of States and the migration policies carried out which transform "Europe in a fortress".

His candidacy has for "perspective" the expropriation of "the capitalist class", and the seizure of power by "the workers" and "communism".

Nathalie Arthaud appealed with her foot to those tempted by the far right: "Le Pen wants the vote of the workers, but she wants them to be docile, submissive, to orders" and with Eric Zemmour, they are "exactly the same, like Bogdanoff brothers of politics".

Nathalie Arthaud during a meeting at the Zénith in Paris on April 3, 2022 Sameer Al-DOUMY AFP

And to warn: "The vote for the far right, in the working classes, is a vote of resignation" but "the workers who would vote for Le Pen or Zemmour to dismiss Macron would be shooting themselves in the foot" because "the far right has always driven for big business".

She also ruled out the idea of ​​a "useful vote on the left": "it can do harm because the world of work always wakes up from its electoral illusions with a hangover".

And reached out to those tempted to abstain: "don't be alone with your anger".

It is rather "to make a militant vote, a vote to show his camp", prescribed Nathalie Arthaud seven days before the first round.

© 2022 AFP