Emmanuel Macron said on Friday to “fully” assume his controversial remarks on Tuesday on the unvaccinated, which he said he wanted to “piss off”.
“We can be moved by forms of expression which seem familiar that I fully assume”, declared the French president during a press conference at the Elysee Palace, before adding: “I am moved by the situation in which we are, the real divide of the country is there, when some make of their freedom, which becomes an irresponsibility, a slogan “.
Saturday anti-pass demonstrations
These new presidential statements on the unvaccinated come the day before national anti-pass protests. The authorities anticipate a new rebound in mobilization with 29,000 to 39,000 demonstrators expected throughout France, against 25,500 before Christmas, according to a police source.
The president’s controversial remarks on Tuesday had triggered a political storm, in the midst of an already very tense examination in the National Assembly of the bill transforming the health pass into a vaccination pass.
But this episode also allowed him, according to the majority, to say out loud what many French people think softly, and to push the oppositions, right and extreme right in the lead, to their limits, by forcing them to clarify their position vis-à-vis- vis-à-vis the unvaccinated and the vaccination pass.
The text on the vaccine pass arrives Monday in committee in the Senate, dominated by the right, for an entry into force hoped as quickly as possible by the government, when the daily average of new contaminations over the last seven days exceeds 200,000.
Marine Le Pen, back on the ground on Friday, in Béziers, the city of Robert Ménard, to pay tribute to Jean Moulin, figure of the Resistance, again attacked Emmanuel Macron, “an arsonist who comes to blow up the debate” on the management of the pandemic.
For the RN candidate, the French are waiting for answers on other problems, including “insecurity and migratory anarchy”.
The other far-right candidate, Eric Zemmour, is in Eure-et-Loir, a return to the field also after the holiday break.
The Covid “trap”
The candidate Reconquest! had already criticized Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday for setting a “trap” by making “the Covid the subject of the presidential election”, calling on his supporters to “not let this election be stolen”.
On the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon sharply denounced the arguments of Emmanuel Macron. For the LFI candidate, “duties before rights are the feudal monarchy and its subjects. Respect for rights creating duty is the Republic and citizenship”.
Target of criticism from the executive in recent days, LR candidate Valérie Pécresse counterattacked on Thursday during a visit to Bouches-du-Rhône and Vaucluse, where the far right achieved high scores , by refocusing the debate on the right-wing’s favorite theme, security.
She thus affirmed that she wanted, like the Minister of the Interior not yet President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2005, “to bring out the Kärcher because it has been returned to the cellar by François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron for ten years”.
Emmanuel Macron’s answer will come on Monday: he will be in Nice on this same theme, hotly contested between Valérie Pécresse, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour.
The poll of the day (BVA for RTL and Orange) gives Valérie Pécresse (16%, -1 point) and Marine Le Pen (17%, +1) neck-to-neck behind Emmanuel Macron (25%) in the first round of the presidential election, but ahead of Eric Zemmour (12%, -1).
The left, fragmented between five candidates (Anne Hidalgo, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Yannick Jadot, Fabien Roussel and Arnaud Montebourg), remains suspended on the announcement of a possible candidacy of the former Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira, who must decide “by January 15 at the latest”, ie less than two weeks before the Popular Primary, a citizens’ initiative scheduled for January 27 to 30.
Holding a primary on the left for a single candidacy, Anne Hidalgo (PS), who has her 500 sponsorships but fell to 3.5% in the latest BVA poll, suffers the persistent refusal of the ecologist Yannick Jadot, who makes his greetings to the press.