In the end, she didn’t go all the way. Christiane Taubira, declared the last on the left as a candidate for the presidential election, is forced to abandon the race for the Elysée, for lack of sufficient sponsorship. She announced her withdrawal from the campaign on Wednesday March 2 during a press conference held at midday, in a long tirade:
“I am addressing you to put an end to a useless suspense. Despite the mobilization of volunteers, my campaign team, a few people from the popular Primary, despite the promises of many elected officials who have not materialized, it is obvious that we will not have the 500 signatures necessary to compete in the ‘presidential election. »
At the end of the intervention, she underlined that she “You will express[t] publicly [s]on vote » for the first round, ” in the next weeks “. Since his declaration of candidacy two months earlier, in mid-January, the maintenance of the candidacy of the former keeper of the seals became increasingly unlikely. This is due to its difficulties in gathering the 500 sponsorships needed by Friday March 4 to confirm its participation in the election.
Critique of the sponsorship system and parties
According to the latest count from the Constitutional Council, it had on Tuesday 1is March only 181 signatures, while 11 of its competitors – including Yannick Jadot, Anne Hidalgo, Fabien Roussel, Nathalie Arthaud and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the left – had already exceeded the threshold. The candidate had announced the day before that she was pausing her field campaign to devote herself to collecting these precious initials.
To justify his withdrawal and his difficulty in collecting sponsorship from elected officials, Mme Taubira felt that his “candidacy hustle, not through [s]a person, but through what it signifies”, as “citizens’ initiative”, out of party, which made it possible. She thus denounced the political parties to which “all that remains today is their ability to cause harm”, in reference to the supposed blocking of his sponsorships.
“This candidacy is prevented by an administrative system that will not survive this campaign, it is living its last hours”, argued the former Minister of Justice, before striking: “We do not eliminate [les candidats] by an obsolete administrative process but by a first round. »
Christiane Taubira also castigated the fact that according to her, “we are not in a regime of separation of powers and this obviously raises the question of the expression of the general will”.
The left “bogged down in an impasse”
She also regretted during her speech that “the left [soit] not audible” and either “stuck in a dead end”estimating that with “ecology [elles] risk being ejected from this presidential election.. The now ex-candidate estimated that she had “stretched out the hand, without preconditions or conditions” to its competitors on the left for “unity of the left”but says: “We find that it remains impossible. »
Since his victory in the popular Primary at the end of January, where his candidacy was chosen by nearly 400,000 left-wing supporters, the campaign of Mme Taubira struggled to take on the field. If she had promised at the end of December that she would not be “one more candidate”the former member of Guyana had been opposed to the refusal of her opponents on the left to participate in the citizen ballot to lead to a single candidacy.
After coming under criticism for her lack of presidential project on her additional and late candidacy, or even on her performance deemed a failure before the Abbé-Pierre Foundation in early February, Christiane Taubira had lost on February 14 the official support of the only party that supported, the Radical Left Party.