"We lived through a campaign under Pfizer, we ended it under morphine," said the deputy from the North, who regrets in this interview with L'Humanité Magazine not having been able to "debate with candidate Macron about tax evasion, lives of employees, retirees".
"It is serious that he refused. Especially if it is then to shed crocodile tears in the event of strong abstention", he adds while Emmanuel Macron is under fire from the criticism of his competitors for not having participated Tuesday evening in the political program "Élysée 2022" on France 2, the only one to have refused among the twelve candidates.
Three days before an undecided ballot which could be marked by a strong abstention, approaching or exceeding according to the polls the record of 2002 (28.4%), the Communist candidate, credited with some 3% of the voting intentions, defends that "there is no useless vote", when the LFI candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon (16% in the polls) advocates "effective voting".
"We have been asked to vote by default for twenty years, to vote in the first round to eliminate a candidate planned for the second", he recalls with reference to the arrival in the second round of the candidate of the National Front (now National Rally) Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002.
"It's fed up. In the first round, we vote for our ideas, we vote for ourselves", affirms the candidate who wants to address "all the way" to "those who doubt, those who hesitate, who have voted a move to the left, a move to the right".
"I ask them to vote for themselves, for their wallets, the future of their children", adds Mr. Roussel, the first communist candidate in the election since 2007.
In 2012 and 2017, the PCF had supported the candidacy of Mr. Mélenchon.
© 2022 AFP